


what's become of me

by rappaccini



Series: ut malum pluvia [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Abbreviated Version of Season 1, Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Drug Abuse, Fix-It, Gray Morality, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pseudo-Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, With an alternate ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 94,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25625323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rappaccini/pseuds/rappaccini
Summary: Eight days before the world ends, the Hargreeves siblings gather to bury their father. And so it begins.(Or, a slight rewrite of Season 1)
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves/Luther Hargreeves, Dave/Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch, Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves, The Hargreeves Family, Vanya Hargreeves/Leonard Peabody
Series: ut malum pluvia [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857544
Comments: 85
Kudos: 184





	1. alone now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [insLicht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/insLicht/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. What is this?  
> Well, simply put, this is a contingency plan for myself, should things hit the fan for a show that’s taken over my life for the past year, and I figured someone else might enjoy it too, hence its posting.  
> Essentially, this fic is an abbreviated version of Season 1. I love it, I do, but I also have a lot of problems with it, so this is my way of reconciling those issues. So, there'll be a few key differences regarding Allison, Diego, and the ending. I realize that so much of this feels like a novelized version of the first season, but it’s just how I ended up writing it. So be it.  
> And because it is very much a novelized version of S1, if you don't want to read something that will tread into outright repetition-- which this fic admittedly does a lot of-- and would rather jump right into the heavy canon divergences, by all means do so.  
> The major changes are: Eudora lives, and her shooting is directly Diego's fault, Allison still uses her rumor compulsively, Five is the one to hold the gun to Vanya's head. With those three big changes, you're pretty much set to dive into 'after midnight.'  
> +Assume that Hazel and Cha-Cha are still doing exactly what they’re doing, offscreen; this fic is shaping up to be massive as it is, and I felt that ultimately, I could afford to skip over them. My concern is with the Hargreeves family, and all else is secondary.

On the twenty-second of March, shortly after seven in the evening, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, celebrated billionaire, dies. The heavens do not open. The angels do not sing. But he is mourned by all the world, minus seven.

For, you see, Sir Reginald was a very important man, a winner of Olympic gold in the arena of fencing, and the Nobel Prize for the cerebral advancement of the chimpanzee. A captain of industry, founder of Hargreeves Enterprises, inventor of Clever Crisp Cereal, and spearheader of every last trend in spacecraft engineering in the last fifty years. 

And, unbeknownst to all, he was also a space alien.

In short, Sir Reginald Hargreeves was, as many would call it, extraordinary.

But enough about him.

And on to the greatest of his achievements, and the greatest of his failures: his children.

At exactly twelve in the afternoon on the first of October, 1989, forty-three mostly single women, who had shown no signs of pregnancy up until that very moment, gave birth to a litter of extraordinary children in a series of seemingly random locations around the world. Those of said children who’d survived the surprise of birth and its immediate aftermath, being utterly unwanted, were put up for adoption, or else abandoned.

Enter Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who, for reasons unknown to all but himself, had quested across the Earth to track each and every one of them down, to lay eyes on them, and, having deemed them extraordinary, make them his own. 

A necessary aside: Herein, ‘make them his own’ is defined, according to Reginald Hargreeves, as ‘adopted.’

Another necessary aside: To Reginald Hargreeves, the concept of ‘adoption’ is defined as ‘traded a stack of cash for your newborn.’

A third necessary aside: He would never teach his children anything different.

In the end, he had managed to obtain seven of them, and he never forgave himself for his failure to account for the rest.

“Why,” cried the reporters standing outside his midtown mansion, “Would you choose to adopt these seven children?”

To this, Sir Reginald replied, “To save the world, of course.”

To which the world asked, _from what,_ and received no answer.

This would be the last anyone would hear from him or any of his children, until that bright chilly day when his children were revealed to the world in spectacular fashion.

At this time, he would reveal to a crowd of stunned onlookers that he had shaped his children into a stunning set of photogenic child vigilantes, henceforth, and even after their disastrous dissolution, referred to as The Umbrella Academy.

(At this time, the world would forget entirely about that seventh baby carriage that had been sighted entering the mansion.)

Dear reader, let your eyes be the ones who do not fall for the smoke and mirrors. Make no mistake: The Umbrella Academy is at its heart a doomsday cult, one designed to mimic the structure of a coed boarding school, whose students have been trained from birth to refer to each other as the words ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ in order to maintain a necessary facade for a public their father-for-lack-of-a-better-word would expose them to regularly.

You see, if anyone had known, what he had actually been doing to them, someone would have stopped him. At least, so the thought goes.

And it’s a nice thought, that upon seeing the harm of children in action, one would be moved to stop it, so we will entertain it.

Whether it would have happened or not does not matter; _this_ matters: Sir Reginald believed it. And so he had made sure to teach his children well, to cover for his mistakes, to take his ideology deep into themselves and keep it close as a secret.

The simple fact is that the truth of what the Hargreeves are to each other is so intricate, so complicated, so prone to misinterpretation, that it would not do to delay the story itself any longer due to a desire to hold your hand and explain the details of the dynamic.

Suffice to say, they are a family, a truly bizarre family, subject to bizarre norms and bizarre customs, but a family nonetheless, a family that had formed against all odds, but had yet to truly realize itself. They are a family, the likes of which the world has never seen.

* * *

Vanya Hargreeves, formerly known as Number Seven, slips out of the taxi that carried her to her childhood home with an overly formal nod to the driver. It had been a long drive, on account of her apartment being situated on the far side of the city from the family mansion in Midtown; she had chosen it for that very reason, for its distance, for its being as far away from the place as she can get within the city limits.

Vanya is grim and quiet as an empty church, with a near-constant slouch to her shoulders, borne down by the weight of decades of constant, unyielding loneliness, of anxiety over all the things in life that should not matter at all, of the gnawing grip of constant inadequacy. 

She comes to a stop, bringing her toes to the last crack in the sidewalk before the steps to the front door begin, the waist-high gate brushing against her legs, with her gloved fingertips poised on the latch, and gathers herself. She cannot shake the feeling that she is walking towards a place she ought to be running away from as fast as she can, the sense that as soon as she creaks the gates open, something terrible will happen to turn her away.

The house seems to sense her hesitation; it towers over her with an air of imposing grandeur, the sort she imagined that the castles in the especially violent fairy tales she’d read as a child would have, the kind a building has when it knows exactly where the monsters roaming its halls lie. It is waiting for her, peering down at her with indulgent disdain through its many windows, watching aloofly as she winces at the creaking of the gate. 

Before she shoulders her way through the immensely heavy mahogany doors, she reaches out, and runs a gloved hand over each of the heads of the stone lions crouched on either side of the stoop. When she was little, she used to take a toothbrush and scrub their teeth clean. Now, they’re green-tinted and crumbling thanks to her neglect. She’d once taken their upkeep so seriously; now she sees that no one had actually cared about them but her.

Vanya doesn’t bother stopping at the coatroom when she steps inside. The sagging, heavy black leather coat weighs her down, but the extra fabric helps her hide, making her feel a little bigger than she is, a little less narrow. Besides, she doesn’t want to make any presumptions; she may not be asked to stay.

Even at twenty-nine, the foyer positively dwarfs her, marble pillars stretching to a curved dark ceiling three stories above her, catching the quiet tapping of her footsteps on the checkerboard tile and making them boom down at her. The grand chandelier sways gently overhead, and Vanya superstitiously sidesteps the space just beneath it. 

The house has always made her feel small and powerless, but strangely, she feels an electric shiver of excitement, a deep instinctual acknowledgement that she is home. She is _home,_ and her father is dead, and without his shadow hanging over them all, her family might be ready to love her, might be ready to open a space among them for her to stay, to belong. 

She peers into the parlor, keeping her toes just behind the invisible line where the doors would slide shut. For years, her world had been so small, confined within a maze of walls, to the house, within which she was only allowed in half the rooms, and the urge to ask permission to enter every room but the foyer has stayed with her, well into adulthood.

She immediately finds the statuelike shape of Mom, gazing into the low, spitting fire with blank glass eyes. She’ll say hello later; she seems busy processing something.

Then, she pauses.

Above the soot-stained mantle hangs her favorite long-lost brother’s portrait, an image of him, frozen at the time he’d disappeared years ago. Number Five had been memorialized carefully, put on display as a lesson to the rest of them: never leave the house without permission, for outside is where there be dragons. Little Number Five hadn’t heeded the warning, and so they had consumed him.

Vanya ventures into the foyer, to gaze up at him for a moment, then carries on.

The parlor, like much of the rest of the halls on the lower levels of the house, the ones that guests would see, is crowded with curios: the heads of her father’s kills from his many hunts over the years watch over them all, and countless priceless knickknacks from his travels abroad crowd the shelves and tables. The house is more a museum than a home, full of priceless, breakable things never meant to be in proximity with children.

 _Or, rather,_ Vanya corrects herself, _it could have been a home, if a different family lived in it._

The walls are crowded with frames, and most families would hang their photos, but hers is not like most families. Instead, gilded frames of magazine covers and comic book issues hang everywhere, the masked faces of her six-then-five-then-four siblings stretched unnaturally wide with false grins.

The only thing in the house that’s hers, she finds neglected on a shelf nearby. Her autobiography sits, forgotten, without a single fingerprint staining the glossy jacket, or crease within the pages itself. 

Vanya pulls _Extra Ordinary: My Life As Number Seven_ out, peering at the back of the jacket, at the authors’ profile that had lied about her virtuosity with the violin. The agent at Identical Press had said it’d sell better, if she’d been a little more special too. It’d really only lead to Helen and the rest at the orchestra, who’d passed her book around like cruel schoolchildren, hating her a little more, for passing herself off as far more talented than she actually is. 

She pulls the pages open, reading the words she’d scribbled when she’d first decided to send it to him, one final nail in the coffin she’d built when she’d decided to write about her childhood and share it with the world: _I figured, why not?_

And she knows, he’d never bothered to read it.

Vanya had intended the book as a scream into the universe, _I’m here too, acknowledge me._ And it had replied, _no thank you._

She puts it back onto the shelf, slowly, listening to it slide back into place between physics textbooks with a final-sounding _thunk._

“Welcome home, Miss Vanya.”

She turns towards the voice behind her, warmth spreading in her chest in recognition of whose it is, and goes to hug the family butler.

Dr. Phinneus Pogo, the world’s first and only sentient chimpanzee, stares up at her, his gnarled brow twisting upwards. Vanya stoops down to take him into her arms, and smiles, genuinely. His hugs were always one of the highlights of her childhood, and she’d gotten many of them. 

“So good to see you,” he says, and she knows he means it.

But she stops. Five’s gaze is still on her. The portrait is a perfect likeness, but for the way his eyes stare coldly down at her. They never used to do that.

Pogo senses her, and she figures she may as well: “How long’s it been?”

“Sixteen years, four months, and fourteen days. Your father had me keep track.”

Of course he did. 

“You wanna know something stupid?” Vanya asks.

She winces a little, at the sound of her own voice, husky and unpleasant. She’s been alone for so long that she’d never learned to speak; her words keep becoming stuck inside her and rusting there.

She’s always been especially comfortable confiding in Pogo, but something like this… well, the funeral must be bringing out her sentimental side. “I used to leave the lights on for him. I was scared that he’d come back, it’d be late and the house would be dark, and he wouldn’t be able to find us, so he’d leave again. So every night, I’d make a little snack and leave the lights on.”

Every night, from the night he left, to the night before she’d been packed up and shipped off to board. It’d been stupid of her, she knows, to think that as ordinary a gesture as hers would be a bright enough beacon to stand out in all of space-time and guide him home to her.

“Oh, I remember your snacks. I’m pretty sure I stepped in half of those peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches.” Seeing the crestfallen look on Vanya’s face, he tries to comfort her. “Your father always believed that Number Five was out there somewhere. He never lost hope.”

Vanya frowns sourly, swallowing quickly. It’s an awful transgression, that _Dad,_ of all people, kept that flame burning, while he’d made her get up, and leave it to burn down to the wick and sputter out while she was at school, losing sleep worrying if he’d come back while she was gone.

But he’s dead now. Her father is dead, and he’d died alone, surrounded by the ghosts of what could have been.

“And look where that got him.”

He doesn’t argue with her.

“Listen,” she says, “I won’t be long, I promise. I’ll leave right after the service.”

Pogo sighs. “This is your home, dear. It always will be.”

Vanya nods wanly, and decides to believe him.

* * *

Allison Hargreeves, formerly known as Number Three, had learned of her father’s death on the red carpet, which really pissed her off, because it ruined her photo op.

Having processed the news, Allison then proceeded into the afterparty, where she’d promptly gotten ferociously drunk in celebration among her _Love On Loan 3_ castmates, who only sort of tolerated her. She had then vomited into a potted plant, and shattered the camera of a particularly cunning paparazzo who’d slipped into the party, which her castmates actually appreciated.

It won’t do, for anyone to see her as less than glowing. She’s one of the most famous women in the world, riding the crest of an acting career that will know no limits, and _A-List Magazine_ has just crowned her as the latest and brightest of America’s Sweethearts, officially cementing her among the ranks of Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock, who she is certain she will soon eclipse. Of course, last February, she’d sidled up to the editor at a charity gala, and had whispered a sweet little something in her ear to make sure of it, but the point remains: Allison Hargreeves is beautiful, and bubbly, and sweet, and supportive, and wholesome. She’s the woman you want to be your best friend, who you take home to meet your parents, who you want to be the mother of your children. 

Allison Hargreeves is not allowed to be anything less than lovely and kind and wonderful at all times. 

(Well. All those reviewers who keep calling her performances wooden in all her films really have no idea about her acting abilities, do they?)

The reputation is exhausting, but it has its advantages. People love her, you see. They _flock_ to her, they _beg_ for her attention, for a flash of smile in their direction, for an autograph, a fleeting touch. They’re eating out of her hands so completely that even when her divorce and custody loss had broken into the public record, the consensus had been deeply sympathetic.

Allison feels an itch in her throat, at the thought of it, the prickling of a nasty little thought in the corner of her mind, curling up to say, _maybe it shouldn’t have been._

She ignores it, and finishes painting over the dark rings under her eyes with foundation. There. She stands back, and examines herself: the lithe body she’s kept tight, even after her pregnancy, thanks to the best celebrity trainers in the business, the fresh set of acrylic nails she’s coated with nude varnish and filed into sharp claws, the sharp gaze she’s perfected with that last stroke of makeup under the right eye. With one last fluff to the mane of tight blonde-dyed curls she’d had done for the premiere, she’s perfect.

Time to socialize. 

Allison clicks out of her pink, frilly childhood bedroom on heels high and sharp-toed as the ones Cruella de Ville kicks puppies with. They’re a little much, especially for a funeral, but Allison’s always thought of it as immensely important to give herself a bit of height. She’s very aware that she’s compensating, that she’d been the shortest of her pack for years upon years, before shooting up all at once, six inches in a single month, when she was sixteen. But it’s simply that it makes her feel good, to look down on people, and heels and high waists and big hair and perfect posture have helped her obtain that illusion. 

It’s especially important here, where posturing is a necessary fact of survival. Look bigger than you are, and everyone will think twice about biting you. It works, more often than it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, well. Her teeth are sharp too.

She won’t have any problems, expects it’ll be just about the same as when they’d all last been together; she’ll be the biggest eyesore of them all, with the exception of Luther.

Luther.

Her heart skips a beat.

He’s around here somewhere. 

In fact, everyone’s probably in the house, someplace. She’s been here about an hour, and hasn’t run into anyone, but it isn’t particularly unusual. The house is massive and bloated, like a cyst about to burst, a mess of nine different buildings all carved into and turned into one. Dad had bought them all, one by one, spreading his ownership like a cancer until he owned the entire block, and once he’d had them all, he’d gone and torn through the walls to let them know who they belonged to. Most of the rooms above her are bedrooms, long vacant and collecting dust; he’d planned for a very big family, and had never quite recovered from the disappointment of having only seven children. 

The house is quiet, and dark, and dusty, and her footfalls are as loud as gunfire against the silence. It’s exactly as she’d remembered it, exactly as she’d dreamt it to be for the past twelve years. It unsettles her, how easily she recalls every detail.

Allison finds the first of her siblings hovering nervously in the foyer, like a guest uncertain if she’s arrived too early for a party.

“Vanya?”

She descends the staircase, slowly, watching carefully, wondering if she’s looking at some trick of the shadows in the hallway.

But _no._ It’s her.

“You’re actually _here.”_

She’d envisioned the funeral, on her plane over, rehearsing how she might carry herself, what she might say, where she might stand, how she might wear her hair if there were any cameramen outside the mansion (to her infinite shock, there had been none). 

But she’d never once considered Vanya would be a part of it. As Allison had perceived it, Vanya was always scurrying away to keep her own company when they were children, even before she’d gone off to boarding school and been done with them altogether. She was akin to a mortal raised among demigods, and she knew her place, most of the time.

The book being the notable exception, of course.

It’s strange, seeing her standing in the foyer, uncertain and timid, weighed down by heavy, unflattering clothes that hang off of her, like she’s disappearing inside of them. She looks like a rabbit, one foot tapping nervously against the floor.

“Hi Allison,” she squeaks.

_She has some nerve, coming back, after that book._

Allison pastes a smile onto her face. She’ll be nice, she decides. So nice that Vanya’ll have nothing good to say about her when she writes her sequel. Kill her with kindness.

“Hey, sis,” she says, sweeping forward to gather Vanya in her arms. 

Vanya goes rigid, then slowly, tentatively, brings her hands up to rest on Allison’s back. 

Sure, Allison had never been fond of Vanya, had always felt a strange, tense sort of unease the few times they’d had to interact, but she hadn’t been _that_ bad. _Really,_ the way Vanya’s got her shoulders knitted together makes Allison think she expects to be bitten by her.

Allison, despite only being five-foot-six in height, positively towers over Vanya.

It makes a cosmic sort of sense that Diego, who has the uncanny ability to always appear shorter than his actual height, chooses to make his appearance then.

His shadow lurches out from the side door beyond the parlor, and the both of them start a bit at the sight of it; Diego has the funny ability to pass soundlessly through any room he enters, being the only one of the Academy who’d truly excelled at stealth.

Allison hates it.

Thankfully, his attention isn’t on her; it’s all on Vanya, on the sin she's committed against the family in the writing of her book. 

He passes her, casting her a vicious glare that makes her flinch, hissing “You don’t belong here. Not after what you did.”

Privately, Allison agrees, a little.

Publicly, she says this: “You’re really gonna do this _today?”_

Diego shrugs.

“Way to dress for the occasion, by the way,” Allison sneers, staring at the ridiculous harness he’s strapped to his chest.

 _Honestly,_ he looks like he’s made a copy of their old mission uniform, and worn it alone for a decade. 

Diego’s eyes sweep critically down Allison’s body, eyeing her blouse.

“At least I’m wearing black,” he fires back, vanishing up into the mezzanine.

Allison draws in a quick, sharp breath through her nose, feeling her face burn hot.

She’s not mourning, is the thing. She isn’t sad at all. She’s here because she’s obligated to be, because it will cause a stir if sweet, sweet Allison doesn’t go home to bury her father. She’s here for the will reading. She’s here to see everyone again, for a few days. 

But he doesn't have to _call her_ on it.

Her eyes flit to Vanya quickly, carrying with them the fleeting, nervous glare of a spoiled child who’d been scolded on the playground, and is daring her playmate to say anything about it.

Thankfully, Vanya is far too meek to even approach the topic, digging her hands into her pockets and dipping her head down, like she’s trying to hide behind her hair, though it’s all tied back in a shabby bun so tight her scalp must be stinging. “You know what, I… Maybe he’s right. I should… It was silly of me, being here.” 

_Here,_ she thinks, _here I will be kind and gentle, and she will forget all about what he has just said about me. She will like me. I am likable._

“You know, _I’m_ glad you’re here,” Allison says, a little too quickly, eyes a little too wide; as far as actresses go, she’s pretty shit at hiding what she’s actually thinking.

Vanya can tell. Something she hates about Vanya is that she can _always_ tell.

Her sister quirks her lip, and shuffles away, leaving Allison alone, staring at the space she’d once been occupying, her fingers tugging nervously at her blouse. 

_I need to change,_ she thinks inadequately, hating how her eyes are already burning, hating how something so insignificant has dug into her and drawn blood.

* * *

Diego Hargreeves, formerly known as Number Two, is looking for something to whip a knife at. He’s got his hands on his harness, ready to sling one out and let it fly at any potential intruders, his instincts sharp from his constant work as a vigilante. 

Of all his siblings, he’s the only one who hasn’t given up the fight, and this is something he takes deep pride in. While all the rest had gone on to live selfish, empty lives, caught up in their father’s lies, his is full of true purpose, one in which he makes true change out on the streets. Just last night, he’d skewered a pack of robbers, ensuring they’d never repeat their crimes again, and this week, he plans on interfering with some Chinese Mafia operations on the waterfront. 

Suffice to say, he is always on the lookout for a threat. And when he finds one, and he _always_ finds one, he’ll handle it.

He started hours ago, in the basement, sweeping clockwise floor by floor, checking doors and windows for signs of forced entry, finding none, even as far up as the roof. He’s been very thorough, scanning each room methodically, accounting for each and every person in the house: Pogo, in the gallery, Allison and Vanya, in the foyer, Mom, in the parlor, Klaus, in the dining room. 

He’s practiced at this, he knows what he’s doing and he’s comfortable with it. He’s far better a fighter than he is a strategist, but he knows how a sweep is conducted, and he’s confident that he hasn’t missed anything.

Now, on his way down, he’s come to the long, narrow corridor that leads to his father’s room, and he finds the door ajar, hearing the squeaking of bedsprings coming from within.

Someone’s there. 

The hall leading to his father’s bedroom is all antlers, sharp and curving and deeply hazardous, casting clawlike shadows across the floor. Frankly, he’s shocked the old man croaked in his bed, and not from skewering himself on them. 

He’s always hated it, with all the antlers and animal heads. When he was little, he was afraid they’d come to life in the night and bite at him, or else start wailing to alert his father of his presence. As a teenager, he learned he was half right, when he found a camera inside the glass eye of an ibex head.

Now, he casts that head a dirty glare as he passes, knowing no one’s around to punish him for making note of the camera.

His father’s bed, unmade, sits in the center of the room, with a long-abandoned tea tray, and a pile of books at its side. In the center of the mattress is a deep indentation, one Diego supposes indicates that he’d spent the bulk of his last few years in that very space. The lights in his father’s room are on, but they’re dim and sputtering, and most of the watery light in the room is coming from the peaked windows, where the massive form of his brother stands, peering uncertainly through the blinds. 

It seems the two of them had the same instinct. Luther may not be entirely boneheaded, but Diego’d still gotten here first. Not that he’d had a head start, what with Luther being off on the moon, of course.

“I can save you some time,” he says, leaning carefully in the doorway with exaggerated casualness, “They’re all locked. No forced entry, no sign of a struggle, nothing out of the ordinary.”

The Academy’s dear failure of a leader turns, and Diego takes in the way his enormous green overcoat is failing to hide the oversized curve of his shoulders. Well, _someone_ isn’t taking care of himself.

He finds it: the weak point, the one he’ll slice at.

“Oh,” he says, vindictive pleasure curling through his tone, “You got _big,_ Luther. What’s the secret? Protein shakes? Low carbs?”

“What do you want?”

Diego digs into his pocket, producing the crumpled set of documents he’d lifted from the morgue, flicking his wrist to whip the pages away from his brother’s outstretched hand teasingly, before finally allowing him to take it. “Autopsy report.”

“And you have this why?”

“Well, that’s because I broke into the coroner’s office. And surprise-surprise, Dad’s death was… normal? Just a boring ol’ heart failure.”

Diego watches Luther page through the report, peering at the photo of their father’s corpse. It’d been strange. He’d never seen Dad so peaceful.

“Yeah, so?”

“So, why are you in here, checking all the windows?”

He thinks he knows: Luther’s suspicious, just as suspicious as he’d been when the news broke, just a step behind Diego in realizing how mundane it is--

No. He hates that. He’s _not_ like Luther. He’s _not._

He’s not. 

Luther is a sniveling bootlicker of a man, only One because he’s willing to follow their father everywhere, quite literally to the moon and back. Honestly, it's a wonder that he even uses the name Mom had given them.

Diego’s different. He’s special. He thinks for himself. He’s been on his own since he was seventeen, and no one can tell him what to do. If Dad had any sense, he’d have seen that, he’d have _seen_ Diego, fighting just as hard, and made _him_ the team’s leader, someone who actually has a backbone, who can be trusted on his own. 

“Were you the first one on the scene?” Luther asks.

“Pogo found him.”

“No, I talked to Pogo. Said he couldn’t find Dad’s monocle.”

Diego shifts his weight unsteadily, keenly aware of that very object, whose presence is burning a hole into his pocket. 

“Your point being?”

“Well, when you think of Dad, can you imagine one time when he hadn’t been wearing it? That means someone took it. Which means there’s a chance he wasn’t alone when he died.”

He’s right, is the thing. He’s right, but Diego can’t let him know who’d taken it.

This is going to be a problem. Luther’s always been like a hound when it comes to mysteries, and he worships the ground their father walks on. He won’t give this up easily. He’ll take it too far, make a mess of it.

Diego keeps his face still, advancing towards Luther. “There’s no mystery here. Nothing to avenge. Nothing to solve. Nothing like that. Just a sad old man who kicked it, alone in his big empty house.”

He pauses a moment, takes in the distressed look on his brother’s face.

 _You wanna be like him?_ He thinks.

And takes another dig at him, because he can: _“Just like he deserved.”_

Luther’s brow furrows. “You should leave.”

“Whatever you say,” Diego sneers, bowing his head with exaggerated ceremony. He’s back and Luther’s already bossing them all around again, “Brother.”

He still goes, telling himself it’s because he wanted to.

* * *

Luther Hargreeves, formerly known as Number One, has his feet on solid ground for the first time in four years, but his head is still in the stars.

His body is still there too, he thinks; his footfalls are too heavy, his shoulders swaying too much. He isn’t used to the gravity yet. Or the light; he’s so accustomed to the artificial warmth of bulbs that the sun, watery as it is through the dense blanket of rain clouds that have descended on the city, makes it almost straining on his eyes.

He’s been wandering the halls for hours, since he’d stepped off the rocket that bore him home. It’s so strange, being in a place he can stretch his legs in, with walls that don’t bump into his shoulders.

It’s so strange, being in a place where he can breathe without the constant, creeping anxiety that keeps him checking the oxygen recycler. 

It’s so strange, Dad not being here. A part of Luther’s convinced it has to be a trick, that a man as powerful as their father couldn’t simply die of a heart attack of all things. In fact, Luther’s still tense, waiting for him to come striding in at any second to snap at them for honestly believing him to be dead.

But he is. _He’s dead,_ Luther repeats to himself over and over: _He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead._

He’ll get used to it. 

Besides, he’s home. 

He’s home, and his family is here. 

Despite everything, something warm in his chest blooms at the thought. His family is _here,_ and at long last they will be a team again. Surely they’ve been longing for it as much as he has been, surely they miss being together. The world’s been crooked since they’ve been apart, and together they’ll finally set it back into its proper orbit. Things will be good again.

He’s certain of it, the corner of his lip pricking upwards at the thought of the house being full again, of the first family meeting they’ll have had since they were seventeen, which he has already collected Vanya and a reluctant Diego for, when he realizes. 

There are voices, coming from Dad’s study.

“...Thank _Christ_ he’s not our real father…”

Klaus.

Luther enters through the side door, careful to keep the corners of his boots from touching his father’s rug. He is greeted with the sight of his brother, bulging his eyes and pulling a face at Allison, who smiles fondly at him as he reclines in Dad’s chair with his scuffy Converse dragging dirt across the desk.

 _He shouldn’t be doing that. Dad’ll get mad,_ Luther thinks automatically, calling: “Get out of his chair.”

“Oh, wow, Luther,” Klaus says, pulling himself up from the chair, and grinning like a jackal, “You’ve really, uh, _filled out_ over the years.”

Klaus, it seems, has done the opposite. The shabby, patchwork overcoat he’s wearing hangs off of his gaunt frame, and his face is now all hard angles, sharp and hungry as the look in his eye. He’s a worn-down wraith, shuddering with scattered energy, and that’s where the years and the state of near-constant addiction he’s spent them in has left him.

“Klaus.” Luther’s gloved fingers are halfway to the buttons of his coat, halfway to closing himself off even more, before he stops himself. 

“Oh, save the lecture,” Klaus extends a beseeching hand Luther’s way, sliding out from behind the desk and slinking towards the door, “Talk amongst yourselves.”

Luther frowns. There’s something in his gait, in the quick, foxlike way he’s stealing away, that tells him exactly what he’s been doing in here, exactly what he’s intending to do as soon as he slips out of sight. Luther throws out a hand, and catches Klaus in the chest. “Drop it.”

Long ago, he and each of his siblings had come to the unfortunate conclusion that Klaus wasn’t going to stop chasing down drugs. Each of them had their own way of coping with it, but in Luther’s case, he’s settled for not allowing Klaus to pursue his addictions in his presence.

It’s not enough, he knows, but it’s something.

Klaus fluffs his feathers, feigning ignorance, but after a moment, he gives in, dropping a handful of expensive baubles to the floor, hissing “Alright! Fine! It’s just an advance on our inheritance, you know? Don’t get your little panties into a bunch!”

He winds his way out of the room with the ambling smugness of a stray cat, and slams the door behind him, for a bit of dramatic flourish, and then Luther is alone with Allison. 

He hasn’t been alone with her in years, and a part of him is wound tight in anxious anticipation. She’s here, in front of him, at long last, and he feels like a nervous teenager.

He breaks the ice: “So, Klaus is still Klaus, in case you were wondering.”

Allison smirks. “You know, after all these years, I find it strangely comforting.”

“You see Diego?”

“With his _stupid_ outfit?”

“Oh, I know. Do you think he wears that thing in the bathroom?”

“Like in the shower? Yes. Absolutely.”

They laugh quietly together for a moment, but silence wraps around them quickly. For a moment, she’s turning a chunk of agate in her fingers, then an old spyglass, and he’s tapping on the page of a book long left open on the desk. There’s so much unsaid, and it’s smothering them.

“I…” How does he say this? “I wasn’t sure that you’d come.”

It’s no secret that she’d had no deep well of love for their father, that she’d been eager to wash her hands of the place entirely when she’d left it. He’d never expected to see her again, when she’d dragged her bag down the steps of the mansion and headed off in the taxi that would carry her to the airport.

Allison drops her gaze, tugging on the glass. “Me either.”

But she’s _here,_ and Luther’s heart skips a beat. She’s not here for Dad.

The door’s been closed on the two of them, has been closed for years now. But maybe...

“You look great.”

She looks up at him, a tense flicker of relief in her eyes that vanishes as soon as he distinguishes it, and her fingers start tugging on the hem of her blouse again. “Thanks.”

“Where’s Patrick? And Claire?”

Allison closes up, pressing her fingers down firmly on the desk. God, she doesn’t want to fucking talk about this.

“Patrick filed for divorce eight months ago.”

Luther blinks.

Allison gets it: “Oh, of course you don’t know; you’ve been gone.”

“What about Claire?”

Allison flinches, as if she’s been slapped, and there’s a flash of naked sadness on her face, vanishing beneath a mask of cool disinterest. “He got custody.”

“Shit, that’s…”

He’s immediately dreaming up solutions. This is a thing Allison cares about, and he wants to help her get it. And he finds one quickly: “Well,” Luther, “You could always do your, you know, rumor thing?”

“Yeah,” Allison taps at their father’s old ashtray with the edge of her nail, “I don’t do that anymore.”

Luther and Allison’s bond has always been exceptionally strong. They’ve always been the closest. In the years leading up to the Academy’s debut, they’d been circling a new sort of bond, one deeper and more intimate, that would have suited them well. 

(A necessary aside: Of _course_ this would have happened. Dear reader, let’s not kid ourselves. 

**` A recipe:`**

  * **`Seven children, each who have the capacity to love and desire love.`**
  * **`Drop into a bowl together, and from birth, isolate systematically from all others their age.`**
  * **`Mix in a constant reminder that they are not related, that they are superior to all others outside their walls, they are demigods in a world of men, that their destiny is greatest of all.`**
  * **`Add three cups of childhood trauma, a teaspoon of mortal danger, a pinch of mental illness, a dash of repression, and a tablespoon of teenage hormones.`**
  * **`Mix well.`**
  * **`Bake, at a thousand degrees in abject terror for seventeen years.`**
  * **`And let sit, alone in the cold, dark world, for another twelve (or forty-five. Do choose for yourself).`**



Now observe what you’ve made. 

Honestly. Given the ingredients, and given the environment, what the fuck did you _expect_ it was going to be?)

Even though they’d never gotten the opportunity to act on those feelings, save a single disastrous date in the greenhouse when they were teenagers, it’s still alive, and pulsing between them. 

It’s how he knows implicitly that there’s no way in the world Allison would simply stop rumoring, unless something had gone horribly wrong.

“What happened?”

“Same thing that always happens. I made a wish, and it came true, and I couldn’t take it back. Don’t be sorry, though,” Allison says, waving a hand, and turning away, “I’m over it.”

He knows Allison well enough to tell that she’s lying, and that now isn’t the time to approach it.

Instead, he asks that she accompany him down to the parlor, where the rest of their family will wait for Klaus to stumble in from wherever he’s skulked off to, where they will plan the funeral.

She obliges, begrudgingly, and there sits by the fire, sipping bitterly on an amber glass of brandy, eager for the burn of alcohol in her throat to distract her from Diego, sitting across from her. She should’ve changed, before she’d come down. Diego will see what she's still wearing, and he will comment on her, and it will become A Thing, and she has a rule about shutting people up now. 

Then, she sees Klaus, returning from wherever he’d gone at last, in _her_ skirt, and switches focus. Allison is a territorial creature, and will not tolerate what’s hers being taken from her.

Luther is saying something, about how they’ll bury Dad, but none of them seem particularly interested in the details, so long as he’s emptied out somewhere and they’re done with it. 

_How callous of them,_ he thinks. _Dad’s a little rough sometimes, but he just wanted the best for us._

So he tries something different: Their father has died, and his final transmissions to Luther on the moon had been stammering and paranoid and fearful, and his monocle is missing, and something is _terribly_ wrong, and maybe this is something that can draw them all together again.

One must be careful not to mistake naivete for stupidity; Luther is a naive man, certainly, but he is not a stupid one. He is not making a mountain out of a molehill.

What Luther _is,_ is misguided. He simply doesn’t realize that the molehill he’s looking at is one that was dug specifically for him to make a mountain out of. One should not begrudge him this; one should never begrudge a person for earnestly expecting that they will not be lied to.

Luther had taken the bait, but only because it had been laid there for him.

And Diego, hungry for a weakness, hungry to prove himself, springs from his chair and brings what Luther’s been circling into the open: “He thinks that one of us killed Dad.”

And that’s that. 

The family’s first meeting in years ends in disaster, with each and every one of them trailing off to separate corners of the house, one after the next, leaving Luther alone, surrounded by images of times that, while they had not exactly been happier, at least they had made sense.

 _Nothing had been the same,_ he thinks mournfully, staring up at the sharp-eyed portrait gazing down at him, _since you left._

Naturally, because the universe has a wonderful sense of humor, particularly as it pertains to the Hargreeves family, it is then that the sky opens wide, and returns him to them.

* * *

Number Five, formerly known as Number Five, makes his return at long last.

He descends in grand fashion, caught in a shivering electrical vortex of temporal energy, a hurricane of static and scattered strands of time that carries him through its eye and down, into the future, down, into his home.

He lands face-first in the rain-soaked leaf mulch, swimming in his suit. 

He lands hard, spat carelessly by space-time at the feet of his family. 

In the moments before he lands, in a moment of truest uncertainty, in which each and every one of the Hargreeves have no idea what to expect, they huddle together, Allison and Luther with their fingers laced together instinctively, Diego, laying down his grudge to stand confidently shoulder to shoulder with Luther, to protect the rest of their family. In this moment, they stand together.

And then it passes, and the sky clears. 

And Number Five crawls to his feet, his head buzzing with a strange scattered static, the exact sequence of events that'd lead him to this point as elusive and difficult to cling to as the wind. He is staring at how his sleeves trail past his shoulders, feeling the aches of age vanish from his body, replaced by a wiry sort of energy he hadn’t felt since he… was a kid.

Oh fuck. He’s a kid.

And the fivesome of bewildered adults gaping at him are most certainly his siblings.

“Shit,” he says, hating the reedy voice that crawls from his mouth.

Five doesn’t have time to lollygag. His stomach is churning, and he has to settle it the way he always does. 

So, he gets to making a peanut-butter-marshmallow sandwich. 

The basement lounge had been a laundromat, once upon a time in the nineties, and before that, a butcher shop, judging by the diagrams still tiled into the walls. Five had learned to read with them, had learned to carve different slabs of meat based on them. In recent years, he’d found this training recur in surprising ways.

They’d made up a story about the lounge, he and his siblings, about how they’d torn through the walls and discovered it one fine day, how they’d made it their own secret hideout. 

This, of course, is a lie, one of the many ones they’d comforted themselves with. It’d been their playroom since childhood, and was once where they would toddle about, back when they’d been deemed too young to be trusted in the main rooms of the house. After they’d grown older, they were granted access to the other floors, to the halls of delicate things they were to never touch, but they’d kept that fondness for the basement, for that quiet, dark den that was theirs, at least most of the time.

This, Five supposes, is why he’s drawn to it in particular, when there are two other kitchens on the ground floor that are much larger and far more equipped. It’s dim and low-ceilinged and not exactly warm, but considerably less drafty than the rest of the house. It’s theirs.

“What’s the date? Exactly?” he calls, flickering like a lighter flame, off, on, off, on, across the room, gathering his ingredients.

“The twenty-fourth,” As before, it seems Vanya is the only one remotely on his wavelength.

“Of what?”

“March.”

“Good.” He knows where he is now. He knows how much time he has.

“So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?” Luther insists, and Five denies him a simple answer, provoking him to stand and bark: “It’s been seventeen years.”

“It’s been a lot longer than that,” Five snarls, digging into his sandwich.

He has little time for nonsense, rattling off quickly about the dead future, the utterly exhausting admission that his father’s insistence that he had not been prepared to time travel had in fact been correct, and-- 

“How did you get back?” asks Vanya, again, the only one of them who seems to get it.

He tells them, about the suspended quantum-state version of himself, the one he’d first leapt in, that first memory time has of him, that it had returned to when he’d torn loose of his fifty-eight year old body, aimed for one time, and landed in another. 

They gape. So he breaks it down for them: “My consciousness is fifty-eight. My body is now, apparently, thirteen again.”

Five takes another bite, cursing Delores (“Delores?” asks Vanya, with a sharp pitch to her voice that he doesn’t recognize, which he nonetheless knows well enough to avoid feeding with an answer) for her superior knowledge, and peers at the newspaper, noting that at least his father’s death is still in play, and heads off without a second thought.

He goes to his old bedroom, finding it perfectly preserved, even _dusted._

There, he pulls on a uniform begrudgingly. He’s always hated the shorts, but it fits him perfectly, and what’s more, it’s familiar. Familiarity is, well. It’s nice, given everything.

There’s a lull, between then and the funeral, when everyone’s off preparing, and Five stumbles across his portrait in the foyer.

He stares at it a moment, hating that he’s returned at exactly the age depicted there in oil for posterity to see. There’s a _wrongness_ to his body that he just can’t shake, and he finds it so funny, how he’s aching for, of all things, his old aches. At least he knew them. At least he’d earned them.

There are footsteps behind him, and he recognizes the hesitant gait, is pleased that its owner thought to come to him.

“Nice to know Dad didn’t forget me,” he says, turning to see Vanya’s face, pale and weary and looking like it hadn’t smiled in decades. 

_Perhaps it hasn’t,_ he thinks.

“Read your book, by the way. I found it in a library that’s still standing.” She’s staring at him, like she can’t quite believe he’s real. “I thought it was pretty good, all things considered.”

Some thing it’d been. If Vanya’s name hadn’t been stamped across the cover, and if her face hadn’t been clinging to the jacket, he’d have never believed it was her. 

“Pretty ballsy, giving up the family secrets.” Especially in a family such as theirs, where secrets are a sort of informal currency. He can only imagine the chaos, of each and every person in his family pricking up to realize that little Seven had somehow absorbed as many of them as she did, “I’m sure that went over well.”

“They hate me.” The quiver in her voice tells him that she believes it absolutely.

“Oh, there are worse things that can happen,” he says.

 _You’re not dead, are you?_ He means.

“You mean what happened to Ben?”

She’d written about it, just a bit. Just enough to let him know that his second-favorite sibling had died. But nothing more.

“Was it bad?”

Vanya doesn’t answer, only nods, her eyes glazing over.

 _Some mess,_ he thinks. _I should have been here, to stop it._

* * *

Ben Hargreeves, formerly known as Number Six, fucking hates his statue.

He’s staring at it now, at the shape of him, frozen forever in that time when they’d been younger, and puffed up with their own bravado; come to think of it, he might be the thing that brought that age to an end. He’s memorialized in that damn uniform, the mask stuck to his face for all of eternity. He isn’t even sure if his face is entirely accurate, but he hasn’t seen his reflection in years, can’t be sure what it looks like anymore, so, as much as it turns his gut to say it, it’s the best he can get to an idea of what he used to look like.

(The one upside, he’ll admit, is the way his tarnished fingers and knee have been shined over the years, by the hands of the only brother who’d remained. It’s nice to know that Luther remembers, that he makes a habit of coming out here to see him.)

It’s almost as bad as the wonderfully cheesy caption on the plaque, the one that’s just vague enough for anyone who visits the house to have to wonder about.

Granted, he gets it. He knows why they don’t want to talk about what happened. Even if it hadn’t been the nail in the Academy’s coffin, it was still, well, horrific. If ghosts could dream, Ben’s sure he’d have nightmares about it constantly. 

Thankfully, Ben hasn’t needed to sleep in twelve years.

He hasn’t been tired, or hungry, or sick, or even cold; even now, the rain passes through him, as if he were made of mist.

 _… Is_ he made of mist? He should talk to Klaus about that, next time he comes down.

Speaking of, the door to the courtyard is opening, and Ben turns to watch his family glide out in a line, Luther at their head, and Klaus at the rear.

By the way everyone’s shivering, and the trails of pale breath puffing out into the air from everyone but Mom, Ben deduces that it is, in fact, cold outside.

Which makes Diego’s choice to go without an umbrella, in Ben’s opinion, quite stupid. Luther has the plausible deniability of carrying their father’s ashes, but Diego has no such excuse; he’s just standing there, letting the rain plaster his hair to his head like a glossy black helmet.

_Umbrellas not manly enough for you? Or is it that they remind you of Dad?_

Both. It’s both.

“Did something happen?” asks Mom, and Ben winces.

He’s only seen her a scattering handful of times over the years, the few times Klaus had crashed at the house between rehab or lovers or shelters, but he can tell something’s different now.

Each of his siblings knows it; Allison voices her own concern, and they all look on with a mix of worry and suspicion, but Diego shuts it down. Course he does.

Ben takes a step past him, takes a good look at Five, as Luther anticlimactically dumps their father into the dirt, and Pogo makes a sappy speech about how being chemically engineered in a lab made him and Dad best friends, which Ben would rather not think about now.

God, Ben thinks, leaning down to peer at him. He’s exactly the _same,_ isn’t he? It’s as if when Five left, he’d stepped out of the house and been fossilized in a hunk of amber, and for some unknown reason, he’d popped out, utterly the same, yet somehow much older.

 _I missed you,_ he wants to say, then glares at Klaus, too high to do the bare minimum of letting him talk.

Behind him, Pogo makes the critical mistake of letting Diego talk about Dad, so Ben settles in for the inevitable drama.

Diego, he knows well, is all sharp edges. Not just the ones he wields, but the ones he pushes through his skin and uses as armor. It has the unfortunate side effect of cutting anything and everyone he gets close to, and that is what he does, when he declares their father a monster.

Which. He’s right of course, but a funeral isn’t exactly the place to say it. They have the rest of their lives to scream it to the heavens.

Ben’s not hear to tell Diego to shut up, but Luther is.

Which makes things worse.

Because then, Diego calls Luther “Number One,” and Ben knows exactly how this mess is going to end.

The fight is as ridiculous and pointless as every single one they’ve engaged in over the years, save, maybe, the fight over the last piece of cake when they were nine; that one had actual stakes.

It goes as all of them go: Diego goads, Luther swings, they go back and forth and make a great mess of the courtyard as Klaus cackles, Vanya and Pogo call for reason, and Allison and Five take on the disaffected stance Ben has decided to refer to as Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys. 

And, well.

Ben is incapable of physical feeling, yet somehow, in some vague cosmic way, he definitely feels that superpowered fist to the nuts that Luther inadvertently delivers to his statue, and sends it crumpling into the mud like the cheap fucking thing it is.

For once, he’s deeply grateful that Klaus is too high to see him wince. He knows for a fact he’d never live it down. 

Allison and Five make their way out, and Ben wishes, sincerely, that he had the ability to follow. But he doesn’t, so he has to watch Diego whip out a knife and do what he always does.

He takes it too far, drawing blood, turning a run-of-the-mill scuffle into something serious.

Ben watches Luther stumble off with his hand clamped over his scratched arm, like a scared little boy, and listens to Diego clumsily deflect the guilt he’s sure is setting in onto Vanya, before reaching out to Mom tenderly and guiding her inside.

Soon enough Klaus is alone with him, the way things usually are. And Klaus is ignoring him, as he usually is, leaning down to put his cigarette out in their father’s ashes, and peering around impishly, letting loose a phlegmy, raspy cough-laugh that rattles out from within his chest.

Ben knows he isn’t looking for him. _Dad’s not around, you know._ _He can’t see you doing that. Course, it’s not like you would know that._

Ben stares at his fallen statue, wishing for all the world that he could be solid himself, so he might be able to kick it while it’s down.

* * *

Klaus Hargreeves, formerly known as Number Four, is drifting, quite happily, in a cloud of numbness, plucking halfheartedly at the guitar he’d played in that band he and Diego had for exactly two weeks when they were sixteen.

He has a few golden hours until he starts to come down, until the urge to use hits him again, and he intends to enjoy his time alone for as long as it lasts. Sadly, it’s never enough.

He listens, amusedly, to the distant growl of Dad’s car puttering away, wondering if Five needs a booster seat to reach everything.

It’s a funny thought, and he thinks about voicing it, but he pauses. Diego’s coming in.

“Hey,” he says, “Whose car was that?”

“Dad’s,” Klaus supplies.

“Oh, good. If that little shit took the Green Galaxy--”

“The _what?”_

Diego winces.

“Please tell me you didn’t name it.”

“And if I did?”

Klaus snorts. 

“My God,” snipes Allison, trotting in from the hall, as aggressively beautiful as a leopard, “You’re such a _boy.”_

Diego takes her in quickly, eyes settling on the drab black dress with suitcase creases in the sleeves, and he grins as she holds his gaze in silent challenge. _See?_ She thinks, _I’m mourning? You see me mourning, don’t you?_

Klaus, to his infinite disappointment, was saddled with the horrible power of mediumship, rather than something actually useful, like telepathy. So he hears none of Allison’s silent challenge.

He doesn’t really need to though. All respect to Allison, but, as someone who’s seen every last one of her movies several times in the theater, Klaus of all people knows that she’s not _that_ good an actress. Gorgeous cheekbones, though.

“Anyway,” Diego says, “I guess I’ll see you all in ten years when Pogo dies.”

“Not if you die first,” Allison snaps.

“Yeah, love you too sis. Good luck on your next film.” Diego pauses, gathering the perfect taunt, and Klaus braces for it: “Hopefully it’ll turn out better than your marriage.”

_Ouch! Bullseye!_

Allison doesn’t give him any time to turn on his heel and walk away.

 _Just once,_ she thinks. _I'll do it just once._

**“I heard a rumor that you fucked off.”**

It bursts out of her, like the first plume of seawater into the deck of a ship that’d just ground up against the rocks.

Klaus watches Diego’s eyes cloud over, and then he’s charging out the basement door without a single word. _Well. He sure did. Little redundant, seeing as he was already leaving, but..._

What she’d said hangs in the air around them, suspended on strings of discomfort, and Allison crosses her arms tightly around her chest, digging her teeth into her glossy lip.

“So much for not doing it anymore,” Ben says, not that anyone can hear him, which is probably for the best, in this instance.

Klaus, who hadn’t been overhearing that particular conversation between Luther and Allison, springs up and sprints after Diego, recognizing a free ride when he sees one. He has maybe five minutes until Diego makes it to his car in the lot behind the house, and he needs to grab his coat, fast. Klaus nearly tips the chair as he rushes out of the lounge, abandoning his cigarettes on the counter.

Behind him, Allison stares at the pack for a moment, then snatches it quickly, burying it in the folds of her skirt as she begins tearing through the cupboards for a lighter. 

Klaus makes it to Diego with half a second to spare, skidding right into his door and finding him staring at the wheel in confusion.

“Allison?”

“Allison.”

Diego huffs. “Whatever.”

“Places to be?”

“Yeah.”

“Mind if I bum along?”

“Sure. Fine. As long as it’s on the way.”

Klaus leaps into the backseat, and because Diego is Diego, he lets him slouch on his nice upholstery.

Along the way to the waterfront, Klaus notes, amusedly, that for all his pent-up rage, Diego always drives exactly one mile below the speed limit. God forbid his big green baby get a scratch.

They get there, finally, and while Diego gets out to stand at the edge of the dock, recite some internal monologue about how _this is his city, and he must defend it against the foul clutches of evil,_ or whatever he’s doing, Klaus feels the cold, clammy grip of lucidness begin to set in.

He glances out the windows, left, then right, then front, then back.

As far as he can see, the shadowy blurs along the edge of the dock haven’t taken note of him yet, haven’t turned their faces and set their lantern eyes on him and started shuffling towards the car. That’s good. That’s _good,_ that’s… He swallows, roughly.

 _Hurry up,_ he thinks at Diego, drumming his feet impatiently against the floor of the car, then pulling open the car door to yell to him.

God, what’s he doing, skipping _stones_ out there?

A familiar chill settles into the car, and Klaus turns. Ben’s here at last, out of focus, warped and distant.

“Hey. What are you thinking for tonight? Eggs? No… Waffles, right? You like waffles.”

It takes a moment, for his words to reach Ben. They’re a foot apart, yet there’s a bit of a delay to the reaction, when Klaus isn’t totally down from his high yet, like he’s speaking to him from the opposite end of a long, dark hall. 

But finally, Ben nods.

Great! 

And Diego stalks in with a police scanner in hand, buzzing about gunshots at a diner. Double great. “Diego! Thank you for joining us! The studio audience has decided on, hold for drumroll please, waffles!”

“Look, I’m dropping you off at the bus stop.”

“What.”

“I’m getting back to work.”

 _“Work,_ my ass,” scoffs Ben. 

“What, breaking bones and cracking skulls?”

“Saving lives, baby,” Diego says proudly.

Well. At least Klaus can say he isn’t high on his own bullshit.

Smartly, he keeps that last thought to himself, as Diego slides his handmade domino mask over his eyes, and pulls out onto the road, leaving the horde of shadows behind them.

* * *

Vanya had gotten her new apartment with the money she’d made from her book. It’s so drafty in the winter that she has to sleep in a coat, and in the summer she has to leave the windows open and sleep in the living room, where the air conditioner is, and there are always strange, small insects scuttling around the kitchen that is so small that it violates several building codes, and the water in her shower is orange for the first minute after she turns it on, and the elevator has been broken for over a year. It’s _hers_ and she loves it.

Not that Five can tell, when he sifts through the three shabby rooms, looking for microphones, cameras, rats, rapists, any sort of threat that might appear in his favorite’s home. There’s nothing, which is good. It’s one less thing to worry about this week, so he can get right to business with her.

She doesn’t keep many personal effects at all, he notes, as he settles into place, carefully ignoring the blood seeping through his jacket arm.

This is not due to lack of interest, it must be noted, but in the habits Vanya cultivated from being shunted from one residence to the next.

A short history of Miss Vanya Hargreeves’ accommodations, from age fourteen to age twenty-nine: Four years of shuffling between various boarding schools and summer camps, and then another four between college dormitories. Even after graduation, she couldn’t stay anywhere long; it had taken time to gain her chair in the St. Pluvium Orchestra, and in the three years between her graduation from music school and her attaining the position, she’d shuffled from fine penthouses to fine townhouses to fine surburbs, supplementing her playing with her work as a live-in nanny, before graduating to a cramped apartment with four roommates, and finally, at long last, the holy grail that is her walkup above the A.V. store.

She’s been here two years, but she still expects that any day now, she’ll have to pack up and leave. After all, those residuals from her book dried up this year, in no small part due to a terrible negotiation she’d allowed her publishing company to badger her into agreeing to.

But that day she won’t have enough to make rent won’t be today, or tomorrow, or anytime this month or next, so Vanya trudges wearily in from the bus she’d fallen asleep on, and keys her way in.

And nearly jumps out of her skin, when she sees who’s waiting for her.

Five has chosen to greet her, sitting in her armchair, looking to all the world like a tepid spouse who’d just caught his wife returning far too late from work to have been simply caught up in traffic and is flicking the lights on to let her know that he’s here, that he’s seen her out this late and would like to have a talk with her about it. 

“You should have locks on your windows.”

Vanya rolls her eyes. At least that flair for the ridiculous hasn’t changed. “I live on the second floor.”

“Rapists can climb.”

“God, you’re weird.”

It’s nice though, having this thing between them back. Now, without the weight of the house pressing down on them, it feels like they have the freedom to freely snark at each other, to be young again.

Vanya settles on the couch, quietly pleased that he’d come to her, quietly hopeful that… there’s a wet spatter of red on his collar that looks _fresh._ “Is that blood?”

“It’s nothing.” Nothing worth fussing over, just the cost of dispatching a squad of elite outsourced assassins hired by the organization he’d just gone AWOL on. 

“Alright.” Vanya blinks severely at him, “Why are you here?”

Five sighs. This is a hell of a weight to carry, and it’s clear that no one else is up to the task. He’d gone back later than he’d intended, had overshot by seventeen years, and though he’s always intended to come to her first, now it seems she’s the only one he can come to at all.

“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust.”

“Why me?”

Because he likes her. Because everyone in the house has an ego the size of the moon, save her. Because she’d known, in that way she _always_ knows, that he should have set his ambition aside, and because if he’d listened to her, he’d have spared himself a lifetime in hell.

Because her book told him that she’s a confident, assured woman who’s finally embraced her gifts, and that’s an asset he could utilize well in what he must do next.

Because he'd never found her, among the rubble. Because when he looks at her, he doesn't see a pallid, death-stained face, or smell rot in his nose. Because he can imagine that Vanya, in that world that he will try his hardest to stop from ever being, had died peacefully, somewhere in the ruins. Because she wasn't a member of the Academy, and was therefore spared whatever awful fate had befallen them.

“Because you’re ordinary.” 

It’s the wrong answer, or rather, he phrased it wrong. He watches Vanya close up all at once, tensing like she’s preparing for a kick to the ribs.

“Because you’ll listen.” 

Vanya nods, a little reassured, and hurries off to gather the necessary materials to treat his wounds. 

He lets her.

The impulse isn’t easy, letting someone touch him. No one’s cared for him in decades, and every hand that’s been on his wrist has been one holding a weapon intended to use against him. 

But it’s Vanya, so it’s okay. Her hands are more calloused now, but the touch itself is familiar enough to stoke a long-dormant memory in him. They’ve been here before, they’ve played these exact parts; he, the patient, she the nurse, and he’s grateful that time has seen that some things are sacred enough to stay.

He examines her closely, the sad lines sketched lightly into her pale face, as if with a penknife, and then quickly looks away. It feels like there’s a ghost, hovering around them. He’s brought it with him, he fears, from the apocalypse; it’s followed him since he’d first landed there, since he'd fallen to his knees in the rubble of his home and cried out for a family that never came.

He doesn’t want to look at it, doesn’t want to let it in. There’s simply no time for it.

“When I jumped forward, to the future, do you know what I found?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never did figure out what killed the human race, but I did find something else.” He recalls it now, too vividly. The sky, choking on smog and molten orange, like the inside of a volcano. The mountains of twisted metal and concrete, the fire _everywhere._ The newspaper, bearing one of his only clues. “The date it happens.”

Vanya draws her hands back, looking to him expectantly. 

“The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.”

For a moment, it seems like she gets it, when she nods, and sets to work on pouring a pot of coffee for him, listening patiently as he recounts the horrors of the apocalypse, even drawing out a half-empty bottle of whiskey for him when he requests something strong to distract from the visceral discomfort that remembering his time in the waste brings. 

For a moment, he wonders if this might be it, the return of their partnership as children. Once they’d bonded over books and mutual disdain for their father, and now they’ll bond over saving the world. Some things are sacred enough to stay, and...

...Then, he sees the twitch in her brow, and realizes, with a pang of betrayal: “You think I’m crazy.”

“No,” she replies, unconvincingly, “It’s just… a lot to take in.”

“What exactly don’t you understand?”

“Why didn’t you just time travel back?”

Five scoffs. “Gee, wish I’d thought of that. Time travel’s a crapshoot. It’s like Dad said, I went into the ice and never acorned. You think I didn’t try _everything_ to get back to my family?” 

_Yes,_ she thinks instantly. _Why would you, given the family we have?_

For what it’s worth, Vanya has been listening to him acutely, but it will not matter. She processes each of words, but the particular sort of enchantment wrapped around her gathers the information up, and shakes it, like a snowglobe. It whirls about the inside of her brain in a staticky blur, then spits it out entirely, forcing the words to roll off her like water off a tin rooftop.

Vanya is ordinary, and ordinary people do not think of the end of the world. Ordinary people do not help stop it. And that is the end of it.

“Dad always did say that time travel can mess up your mind. Maybe that’s what’s happening?”

What little patience Five has has been depleted. He can hear the clock ticking in the back of his head, a second closer to midnight with every moment he wastes, so he makes for the door. “This was a mistake. You’re too young, too naive to understand.” 

Vanya is suddenly thirteen again, watching Five leap up at the dinner table and storm out into the unknown, but _this_ time, she doesn't just shake her head when he looks to her, _this_ time she doesn't just stare distressedly after him as he goes; _this_ time she is strong enough to cry out, “Wait.”

He does.

“Five, listen.” Vanya draws her hands into her sleeves and tugs at the fabric, needing something to hang onto as she firmly says, “I haven’t seen you in a long time, and I don’t want to lose you again. That’s all.”

“And you know what,” she moves to the couch, begins pulling pillows and blankets down, “It’s getting late, and I have lessons early, and I need to sleep, and I’m sure you do too. We’ll talk in the morning again, I promise. Please.”

 _Stay,_ she thinks. _Stay, just for a little while longer, and let everything settle in. Don’t go running off into something you can’t come back from again._

And until she’s in her bedroom, and the door’s closed, Five pretends he will.

It’s important to him, in a way he can’t quite grasp, that she not see him leave. 

But he has to, don't you see? He has a world to save, and the weight of the glass eye in his pocket is too heavy to ignore. 

For the second time, Five leaves.

For the second time, he sets the whole mess into motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No matter what, I'll never be pleased with this chapter. It is very much a novelized version of 101. But it felt necessary to include, given the parameters of the project, and it was a fun exercise in getting in the character's heads.


	2. guide and guardian

Diego wakes, as he often does, to the cold concrete press of a holding cell bench into his back, to the buzz of fluorescents, and to Rodriguez’s disdainful glare as the cell door creaks open. There’s a space on his chest that stings, from the electric bite of Eudora’s taser, and he runs his fingers over it carefully. 

He’s been in this situation so many times, has wasted so many hours watching dust motes floating through the cell reflecting sunlight, that it takes him a minute to remember what, exactly... Ah, yes, there it is: Last night, he’d gone to investigate the shootout at Griddy’s Doughnuts he’d heard about from the scanner he’d bought on eBay a few years ago. He’d strolled in, taken a peek at the crime scene, spoken to the sole witness, learned the cops had concluded it was something to do with a company of professional mercenaries who’d presumably turned on each other over some dispute (which he had a bit of a laugh about), and had been on his merry way.

Until Eudora.

 _Well,_ he thinks, as Rodriguez cuffs him-- a courtesy, more than anything-- _Can’t say I don’t bring it on myself. After all, her scenes are the ones I always stop by._

It’s very, very intentional, for what it’s worth. Diego’s naive to a lot of things, but not to the overlap in their movements. He makes a habit to keep an ear open, for her name buzzing through the scanner. 

It’s not that he misses her. It’s not that he’s smarting after she dumped him, it’s been _years_ after all. It’s that her crime scenes are the ones that are the most interesting, the ones he knows he’s got to get his hands on, the ones that are most worthy of his help. It’s that, if he hadn’t been tossed out of the Police Academy, he’d have most certainly been working them too; he can’t possibly trespass on something that would have been meant for him.

It’s that Eudora Patch has a chronic case of stick-up-the-ass and she’ll never get a single case closed on her own.

And there she is now, seated at her desk in a rigid white turtleneck that makes her flash in the dim light of the station, chatting with Beeman.

And in _three, two, one…_

 _There_ it is. That look of utter annoyance.

The one that’s utterly laughable. Come on now, he _knows_ that Detective Patch only arrested him for interfering with a crime scene out of jealousy. It’s _obvious,_ isn’t it? No one in the world can be that straight-laced, especially not someone who tazed him as hard as she did.

 _And if her sexual preferences are any indication..._ he thinks, recalling those nights they’d spent together in their Academy days with a rotten smirk.

Well. She’s lying to herself. A lot of the cops in here are.

“Uncuff him,” she calls, and he can hear the reluctance seeping from her voice.

Rodriguez pulls the cuffs from his wrists, and sets him loose into the station with a pat to the back and a knowing nod. 

See? He gets it.

Diego’s great at stealth, but even _he_ should have difficulty walking into the middle of an active crime scene crawling with people who know him well and interrogating their star witness. Yet, last night, after dumping Klaus off at the bus stop, he’d done just that.

Diego’s got an ego the size of the Perseus Building, but he isn’t stupid. He knows some of those cops turned a blind eye to him, that they’ve done it before, and they’ll do it again. And he _knows_ why: the simple fact is that they all wish they could do what he does, that they long for the freedom a mask brings. That they’re burdened by bureaucracy and regulation. 

He isn’t. Thank God he’d been turned away before he graduated from the Academy. Otherwise, he might’ve ended up as weak as them.

Diego slouches down into the worn wooden chair by Eudora’s desk, snatching a mint-green report from off her desk, sending the rabbit’s foot keychain atop it skidding across her notes.

This, he knows, is the report from the shootout. From what he’d seen, from that instinct in him that’d been honed by seventeen years of his father’s rigorous training, he gets the sense that this crime’s shaping up to be real special. Something he’d love to keep an eye on himself. 

“So,” he settles in to read it, “Did you, uh, talk to the tow truck guy--”

“Shut up,” she snaps, plucking the page out of his hands before he can make sense of her careful handwriting, “And listen carefully.”

Diego stills.

“The next time you interfere in one of my investigations, you so much as breathe on one of my witnesses, or touch a piece of evidence, I’ll charge you with obstruction. You will do jail time. Is that clear?”

_I'm quaking over here._

Diego rolls his eyes. “You need to relax, Eudora, all this bureaucracy--”

“Don’t call me that.” 

There’s Eudora, all bent on professionalism. It shouldn’t matter, not _really,_ they know each other. She knows he takes her seriously, right? They were together for months, they were friends long before that, and classmates before _that._ He’s known her for over half a decade now, has been circling her life since she’d joined the force and he hadn’t.

“Look, I know you, okay. You like playing by the rules, but you _live_ for putting the scumbags away.”

She rolls her eyes. In denial, like just about everyone.

That’s okay, he’ll convince her. 

“So,” Diego leans forward conspiratorially, lowers his voice to get her to crane her neck towards him, “Why don’t you put that badge down for _one_ night, and come out on the streets with me? Without all this bullshit?”

This will be good for her, it’ll help her cut loose, blow off some steam, get immediate results.

It’ll be good for him, too. It gets lonely out there, and it’s been a long time since Diego’s had someone watching his back. 

“You’re right,” she replies flatly, “That sounds super fun.” 

Ouch.

“But I think you missed some things when you got yourself thrown out of the police academy, so let me explain.”

_Oh, here we go._

“This _bullshit_ is what gets convictions in a court of law.” 

_Well, who cares about convictions,_ he wants to say, but is for once smart enough to hold his tongue. He knows better than to start a fight with Eudora about this sort of thing.

“What you do out there is a fantasy. I would love to play cops and robbers and wear a mask and feel important, but guess what? Recess is over. It’s grown-up time.”

Her words cut into him like a razor, and he bites the inside of his cheek. Hard.

“You know what I think? I think that you’re still trying to prove that when you were a kid, running around in that _stupid_ uniform, that it wasn’t for nothing.”

His face is burning.

“Yeah, I know you too Diego.” 

Diego scoffs. Over the years, his anger has grown inward and gone septic, like an ingrown toenail, and the sting of that old pain pulses in his chest now.

“Now go,” she says coldly. “Before I change my mind.” 

Because he loved her once, he decides to indulge her, leaning in to try for a kiss, which she waves off dismissively.

 _Fine,_ he thinks, striding out into the chilled March morning air. _Fine, you’ll change your mind, alright. You’ll see._

* * *

Vanya is slow to wake, the heavy weight of sleep reluctant to pull away from her. She’s always slept heavily, always had to set a dozen alarms within minutes of each other, yet somehow found a way to ignore them all.

It’s a blessing, sometimes. In the house in which Vanya was raised, being able to sleep through the night without being jostled from slumber by intense, malignant nightmares is far from unnotable. Vanya hasn’t had a restless night since she was four years old, and for that she is deeply grateful. It’s one of the few things her medication does that she is sincerely pleased with.

It’s a curse, too, though. She’s horrifically prone to oversleeping, and is forever late to anything and everything in the morning, which has contributed to her orchestra’s deep sense of dislike for her; she’s always, _always_ late. 

This morning, it seems, is no exception. Vanya can’t shake the drowsy veil that hangs over after she awakens, rolling back into sleep two, no, three times, before the rattle of the train urges her awake.

She finally stares at the abused face of her clock, and grimaces. She’d slept through her alarm by several hours; is sorely lucky that this is a day that she doesn’t have orchestra practice or any lessons until the afternoon. She was supposed to do laundry today, to...

Five’s here, she remembers.

Five’s _here._

Vanya pulls herself to her socked feet and is up and moving faster than she’s ever climbed out of bed in God knows how long. She doesn’t bother to change; she’s fallen asleep in her clothes, and will just do it later, after...

Vanya is staring at her couch, at the blanket folded meticulously across its flattened cushion. 

He’s gone.

Again.

He’s gone, and something in Vanya tears open.

A strange, irrational sort of terror seizes hold of her, the fear that she might’ve been dreaming after all, that the events of the previous night had all been the product of her restless imagination, and she’d had no idea about it. 

There’s only one way to find out, she knows, so she gathers her things, and hurries out to hail a cab.

The ride to the mansion is long. Too long. She spends it tapping her foot nervously against the soda-stained floor, and when she gets there, she hurries in before it can scare her away. It doesn’t matter if there’s no place in this house, or if she isn’t welcome here; she has to know.

Thankfully, no one’s here to greet her when she hurries through the foyer, or up through the dingy, green hallway containing the stairs to Five’s room. For whatever reason, their father had seen fit to give him one a floor above the rest of them, which always made journeys to his bedroom rather inconvenient. Maybe he liked it that way.

Growing up, everyone had always told her to stay out of Five’s room. Everyone except for Five, that is. So she crosses the threshold without hesitation.

“Oh, thank God,” she breathes, when she sees him peering out the window that looks out onto a dingy gray alleyway. His back is to her, and he’s exactly as she’d last seen him, yet somehow completely different. “I was worried sick about you.”

“Sorry I left without saying goodbye,” he says, and she can’t tell which time he’s apologizing for.

Neither can he, for what it’s worth. There are a lot of things he regrets, but he cannot be certain if that act of leaving had been one of them. Everything after, absolutely. But in that bright, golden moment where he’d been sprinting out into the sun, he’d felt a sense of absolute freedom he hasn’t felt since, and he finds it important, to privately hang onto that feeling, to keep it safe within himself.

At thirteen, his logic had gone: stay in the house, or race towards the future. It had been between Vanya and the world, and he’d chosen the world. He had a choice to make, and he’d made it. 

He can’t let himself regret it. Too much has happened to let himself succumb to regret. If he opens the door to this one, the rest will burst in, and he’ll come undone. There’s no time for that.

“No,” Vanya says, shaking her head as he turns to her. “I’m the one that should be sorry. I was dismissive, and I guess I didn’t know how to process what you were saying. I still can’t, to be honest.”

Five struggles to keep his disappointment from showing. So much for his original plan. “Maybe you’re right to be dismissive.” He walks in a slow circle around the room, staring at the strip of wallpaper across the fading green paint, _wondering..._

His sanity isn’t exactly a given. It’s something he’s agonized over for years. Isolation does terrible things to the mind. “Maybe it wasn’t real after all. It felt real, but… well. Like you said, the old man always said time travel could contaminate the mind.”

“Then maybe I’m not the right person for you to be talking to.” Vanya is ordinary. She cannot help Five with his quest, cannot even _comprehend_ it, but she can offer him an ordinary solution. It had helped her, for a time, after university, even if she’d ultimately found herself up against a brick wall. “I used to see someone, a therapist. I could give you her information.”

“Thanks,” he says, determining the best way to send her on her way is to lie about looking after himself, “I’ll just get some rest. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good sleep.”

Vanya relents, the loose strands from her bun swaying as she nods, and she ducks out of his bedroom, as if dismissed. He hears her feet tapping on the stairs as she slips out of reach, like sand through an hourglass.

Five reconsiders.

He starts after her.

Klaus, who has a truly cursed sense of dramatic timing, chooses that exact moment to make his presence known, rolling out of the wardrobe he’d been ordered into when Five had heard Vanya’s footfalls on the stairs, to drawl, “That’s so touching? All that stuff about family and Dad and time! Wow! I’m _moist...”_

Vanya only vaguely hears him, the tones of his voice, and she ignores them entirely. She’s already frozen up at the end of the hall, ducking behind a doorway to observe Allison, who hasn’t yet left for her plane back to Hollywood, whose suitcase, she notes, is completely unpacked on the floor beside her frilly pink bed. 

Allison is hunched over the phone in the hallway, hissing something at who Vanya correctly assumes is her ex-husband. 

“... like to say _hello_ to my daughter...”

Vanya draws back, smartly deciding not to make her presence known just yet.

Allison huffs, slamming the phone on the receiver. Patrick won’t see her in person anymore, and even over the phone, he’s terse and flighty and anxious to keep all discussions to a frank minimum. Did the lawyers tell him to do that, or was it his own choice?

 _Honestly,_ she thinks, _there’s no reason why I couldn’t have spoken to her. What does he think I’ll do, rumor her?_

She can’t. Obviously. Allison can’t rumor _anyone_ over the phone, even if she wanted to. Dad had been quite thorough in charting the limits of her powers, and much to their mutual disappointment, rumoring over phones, walkie-talkies, radios and the like is simply ineffective. It has to be in person.

Allison knows a lot about her rumor, actually. She knows that she can only use it with the trigger phrase her father had trained her to accept as a toddler, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. She knows it has to be used in person. She knows the person she’s speaking to has to understand her.

She knows that from this distance, she has to talk to Patrick like he’s a person. Which is where the problem comes in: she’s never really had to do that before the divorce. She doesn’t know how.

“Are you okay?”

Allison flinches at Vanya’s quiet call from the end of the hallway, furious that she’s been seen in a moment of weakness. “Yeah.”

Here, Vanya thinks, is a chance for her to connect with Allison. To comfort her. “Well, I’ve never met your ex-husband, but he sounds like an asshole.”

Allison simply stares at the phone, wanting more than anything to kick her Louboutin through it, to distract from that needling, vicious thought, that maybe it isn’t Patrick that’s the problem.

“You’re probably better off--”

“You know,” Allison snaps, “If I wanted advice, it’d probably not be from you.”

“Well, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Allison’s never gotten along with Vanya. There’d always been this odd, prickling sort of tension between them, all the way back to when they were kids, and time, it seems, has only intensified that unease. Something always makes Allison’s skin crawl around her, makes her throat burn. She supposes that part of it is Vanya’s tendency to keep pushing into spaces where she doesn’t belong.

“You don’t have a child,” Allison snarls, “You’ve never even been in a relationship.”

“That’s not true,” Vanya protests weakly.

_Really? You’re the very definition of a cold fish._

“So _you_ know what it’s like?” she scoffs, “Losing someone like this? Like when you’re apart from her, you can’t breathe? Like you’d die, and I mean actually _die,_ to know she’s okay, and happy?”

Vanya drops her gaze.

Allison takes this to mean that she has made her point.

“I mean, you separate yourself from everyone and everything, you always have.”

_Come on now, Vanya, don’t make yourself the victim here. You got to be your own person. You got to leave the house, and go to summer camp, and actual school with actual kids your age. I’d have thrown you off the roof if it meant I’d get the same. All of us would, and you know it._

“Because Dad made me.”

_Dad this, Dad that... Honestly. Dad didn’t make you tell the whole fucking world about us. You know, some things ought to be forgotten about._

“Did Dad _make_ you write that book about us, too?”

That book. That fucking _book,_ that made everyone on set gape at her like she’d grown a second head, that made her assistant quit, that she had to field questions about for months, that she had to publicly disavow, that was used as evidence against her in the fucking custody hearing...

Vanya’s face crumples. Good.

Allison strides past her, Patrick on her mind, itching for a smoke. 

She pauses. Has to drive the knife in deeper, just to be sure Vanya gets it. “You know, you’re an adult now. You don’t get to blame your problems on anybody but yourself.”

Vanya’s left alone, stingingly aware of why she never comes back to the house.

She decides not to linger, thinking: _Fine? You want me to separate myself? Here I go._

The whole ride back to her apartment, she’s gnawing on her lip, furious with herself for wasting her morning in bed, wasting the whole day on going to the house and back. Now she’ll have only an hour or so to practice before her lessons start, and her concert’s in a few days.

Her lessons go… well, they _go,_ is the way to describe it. Vanya has always been a perfectly serviceable teacher, but she is soft-spoken and dull, and her students are not particularly fond of her. In fact, many of them are much more talented than she is.

They go, and then they’re gone, and Vanya’s left with some time to practice before she’ll warm up one of the TV dinners that constitute a third of her diet, so she hacks away at the piece she’ll perform at the Icarus this coming week.

It’s important to rehearse, Vanya has found; she isn’t naturally good at the violin, so she must compensate with constant, careful practice. But for the life of her, she just can’t get this run right--

There’s a knock at the door. Sharp, rapping, urgent.

It’s her neighbor, probably. Vanya leaves her windows open a lot, and Mrs. Kowalski’s enormous tabby cat somehow manages to crawl in through them from an inch-wide ledge of brick. Secretly, Vanya likes it when he drops by, not that she’ll ever tell the neighbor, of course. The last thing she needs is a conflict there.

“Mr. Puddles isn’t here,” she begins, before stopping short.

It’s not Mrs. Kowalski. 

It’s a man, tall and lean and pale, with a deep swoop of brown hair and sharp eyes.

_Is he lost?_

“I’m Leonard?” he says, almost like he’s unsure of his own name.

Vanya blinks.

“Your four o’clock?” 

_Oh,_ Vanya remembers: the last-minute addition to her lesson plan, the one that the agency she freelances for had set her up with just yesterday.

“I forgot,” she breathes, “I’m _so_ sorry. And, listen, please forget that bit about Mr. Puddles, he’s just my neighbor’s cat, and he keeps getting into my apartment and...”

She should stop talking, she decides, and lets him in with an apologetic shrug.

He smiles as he enters, a little awkwardly. “I’m guessing I look different from your usual students?”

“Oh, you’re only about twenty years off of the usuals.”

“Well, the ad didn’t say anything about age limits.”

“No, no, it’s just that most of my students are kids. Easier to learn when you’re young, you know, it’s like a second language.” Privately, Vanya’s pretty sure that she isn’t great at the violin for this very reason, having only started it shortly after the Academy had debuted. She’s always playing catch-up.

Leonard follows her lead, when she directs him to the corner of her apartment that she’s set aside for her students, and soon enough, they’re hacking through _Frere Jacques,_ and the ice has been broken. 

In fact, she finds that she rather likes Leonard quite a bit. He’s responsive, and his jokes don’t land much, but it’s sweet of him to make them anyway, and he listens to her. Granted, he’s her student, and he’s obligated to listen to her, but she still appreciates it. It’s nice, after the day she’s had, to have an adult look at her like what she’s saying matters. It helps that he’s handsome.

The lesson comes to an end, and Vanya is packing up her notes, preparing to add him to her schedule next week, and making note of his workplace address in Bricktown for her reference book, when he asks, “be honest, is it weird of me, wanting to learn violin this late in life?”

“No,” Vanya says, completely honestly, “Monet didn’t start painting until his forties, and he did alright for himself.” Secretly, she hopes the same might be true for her, that if she waits long enough, then suddenly, her talent will snap into place, and she’ll find herself to be a prodigy. “If you love music, you’re in the right place.”

“Well, to be honest, I think you’re describing my father, more than me; he was the music lover, and honestly that’s why I’m here. He died a while ago, and I guess I want to get closer to him, in some way.” 

It’s a lot to tell someone on a first meeting, but Vanya brushes it aside. He’s an unnaturally old student, and he feels uncomfortable, and he

needs to justify why he’s here. She’s done the same, many a time.

“I’m sorry,” she supplies, quite awkwardly, and he brushes it off.

“It’s alright. We had a complicated relationship. Family isn’t easy, you know?”

Vanya sighs, smiling empathetically. _It is, isn’t it?_ “Believe me, I get it.”

On his way out, Leonard pauses, turning a little awkwardly, and invites her to drop by his woodworking shop in Bricktown. It feels like he’s been waiting to ask this for a while, like he’d taken a look at her sometime during their lesson and had decided that she is worth knowing. The thought makes Vanya feel a flutter in her chest, that he might like her, that he might want to see her outside of when he’s meant to.

She tells him, _maybe,_ but as soon as he closes the door, she knows with absolute certainty that she will.

* * *

Five has a gargantuan task ahead of him, but he knows he can do it.

Before him are the pieces to a puzzle he must solve, but cannot yet because he’s missing the box with the picture on it to guide him. But he most solve it, you see. He _has_ to, there’s simply no other choice, but more than that, he knows he is capable of it. He’d kept himself alive for forty-five years without a single person depending on him. He’d completed some of the most legendary missions the Temps Commission had ever seen. He’d found his way home. He’d done it all on his own, and so he can save the world on his own.

He just didn’t think it would be so _hard._

When Five had left his sister’s apartment, he’d done so with a plan forming in his mind: the eye in his pocket had been one he’d plucked from the stiff, dead fingers of Luther, in the wreckage of a theater that had become his family’s mausoleum.

He’d found them there, laid out, one next to other. One, beside Two, beside Three, beside Four. All of them, coated in ash, singed by flame, battered by rubble. They lay at the center of a web of corpses, some mutilated, some smashed, one, just beyond them, utterly blackened into a husk that crumbled into charcoal dust when he’d reached for it, burnt beyond any and all recognition.

Five does not know what causes the end of the world. But he knows that his family had been there, that the Umbrella Academy’s surviving members had assembled to stop it, and that they’d gotten within striking distance before it had all gone horribly wrong.

Five does not know much, but what he does know is that Luther had killed, had pried an eye from a head. And Five knows Luther, and the simple, black-and-white way of seeing that he clings to ferociously.

Therefore, Five had deduced, the only person Luther would kill in such a ferocious manner must be responsible for the end.

Therefore, the world-killer has a brand-new glass eye, and that glass eye’s serial number and manufacturer are etched into its back.

Therefore, Five narrowed his list of suspects from seven billion down to the few thousand that would have gone to Meritech Manufacturing in the past few years, and suddenly, he had a lead.

So, he had gone, bright and early, playing the concerned schoolboy wanting to return a found eye to its rightful owner.

Only, the absolute _asswipe_ of a man he’d been greeted with wouldn’t let him pass.

So, Five recalibrated. He needed someone who might pass for an adult, to get him in a layer further, and Klaus had been, if nothing else, available and willing, for a twenty that Five did not have nor planned to give him.

They’d been friendly enough, as children. While Five had never considered Klaus particularly trustworthy, hence his decision to exclude the date of the apocalypse from his brief admission of the future’s events to him, they had gotten into a lot of trouble together. This camaraderie, so Five’s logic had gone, might yield some results now.

To put it simply, it did not.

They’d gotten further than Five had on his own; with Klaus masquerading as his father, he’d found his way into the inner offices of Meritech, and gotten face-to-face with that noisome doctor who’d been a barrier to him earlier. 

After Klaus had shown a shockingly effective capacity to injure himself for the purposes of blackmail, a commitment Five finds mildly frightening, admittedly hilarious and (begrudgingly) quite impressive, they’d even gotten access to the identification files that would lead him to the owner of the eye itself.

There’s just one problem. One teensy, tiny little world-ending problem.

The identity of the glass eye in Five’s pocket, which had been clutched in Luther’s fist, which had been in the eye socket of the person who’d ended the world, is unknown.

Because the eye in Five’s pocket hasn’t been manufactured yet.

Which, _fuck._

So. Five had wasted a day, and now he’s no closer to discovering the identity of the world-ender. Damn. 

He’s a coil of desperate, anxious energy, thinking about the hours slipping from his fingers, and he needs to settle himself, to find someone to bounce his wild thoughts off of, to anchor him.

For lack of anyone worth trusting, Five finds himself falling back on an old flame.

He’d gotten the address yesterday, from the fellow at Ishmael’s Towing he’d spoken to shortly before shit had hit the fan at Griddy’s Doughnuts, and he’s had it in the back of his mind for a while. She’d been meant as a backup, more than anything, but it seems that he’ll need her after all. There’s just no one else.

So, Five strides across the gargantuan deserted parking lot, across asphalt reflecting the red shine of the flickering neon Gimbel Brothers’ department store sign, and jumps through the sliding-glass doors, shaking the rain from his hair and the electrical tenderness from his limbs.

The store is dark, being well after closing, but Five knows the way. He’s been here before, forty-five years ago, and some version of himself will be here in seven days’ time, picking through the rubble.

It had been then, digging desperately for survivors, that he had discovered her, risen above the ruin, her pale face, framed by long, straight brown hair and bangs, shining like a beacon to him (She’d lost the wig immediately after he’d tugged her loose, but that’s fine. She didn’t need hair to be beautiful), a reassurance from the universe that he might not have to survive this alone.

She’s here now, not buried, but standing tall and unblemished on a stand in the women’s section, clad in white, and resplendent in the harsh white light of his flashlight.

Five smiles wistfully at Delores, and greets her. It’s been a rough couple of days, and he hasn’t seen her for much longer than that. He’d had to give her up to take the job the Handler had given him, and now he’s ready to pick up where they left off and--

An explosion of light and sound.

Bullets, tearing through the air, through the clothing racks, through Delores’s stiff plastic body.

And just beyond the guns they originate from, the candy-bright cartoon animal masks, grinning blankly at him. The navy blue suits of a pair of Commission assassins, no longer the outsourced goons that had been sent for him last night, but two tried-and-true veterans, who he knows instantly from their masks: Hazel and Cha-Cha are here, and they are here for him.

Five jumps, landing six aisles away on his side, the wind knocked from him, with Delores under his arm. He checks her for a moment-- fine, if now dismembered, but that’s alright, she doesn’t need the legs anyway-- then sets to work.

He flashes in and out, shucking a kitchen knife from its plastic casing and slashing viciously into Cha-Cha’s arm, moving fast, to keep ahead of her bullets… when suddenly, his powers abandon him, sending a spike of naked fear through him.

Shit.

He has so much trouble, knowing his limits. He always forgets that when he gets too tired to run, he’s too tired to slip through space.

But Five is cunning enough, and the alarms are blaring, so in the minute it takes for the police to come roaring up, he smartly hides with Delores in his arms, waiting for the hitmen to escape, which they do.

Then, he sets himself to the long walk home, Delores and the weight of the world bearing down on his back. 

* * *

The attic of the old townhouse that’d been grafted onto the mansion like a splotch of skin over a burn wound has always been Allison’s favorite hideaway as a child. At the time, it was the furthest away that she could get. 

Now, with all the freedoms of adulthood and a dead father, she still finds herself returning to it, kicking off her heels to leave bare footprints in the dust, running her fingers over the rough unfinished walls and dance her fingertips over the cotton-candy-colored insulation. Her favorite window is still here, and it takes a rough wrench of her arms to open, but it gives, and she’s sliding out to dangle her legs onto the fire escape. 

The view is still exactly the same, twelve years later. She can see the artificial twinkle of the skyscrapers, the bluish scraps of smog drifting around them, the flat black sky, the gaudy green flash of the Perseus Building’s eyesore of a logo. She’d sit here, when she was younger, and stare out at them, wondering what it would be like, to be part of the world.

Well. Now she knows.

So much for that.

Allison takes a drag from her cigarette, watching a curlicue of smoke spiral elegantly from it and dissipating out into the air, carrying with it thoughts of Patrick, and of Claire, and of the mess that she’s in. She keeps the smoke in her lungs for a long moment, then exhales, long and slow.

Her throat is burning, and she can hear her father’s voice in the corner of her mind, urging her to take better care of it.

Sir Reginald had taken great care to develop Allison’s power; it being so uniquely useful had cemented her position as one of his favorites. He’d had her meet with voice coaches, plied her with special drinks designed to soothe her vocal cords. Allison had hated the exercises, the odd trilling noises she’d make three times a day to warm herself up; she found them quite stupid. 

But, she went along with them. Her power determined her place in the pecking order. It had won her a large bedroom and boy band posters and makeup and fashionable clothes she got to wear inside the house. It had won her the respect of her brothers. She found the extra upkeep remarkably stupid, but she allowed it.

Though, she’ll admit to no one, she takes pride in how her language lessons that far exceeded those of her siblings; if the people you’re rumoring don’t understand you when you’re speaking, you can’t do much, after all. Each of her siblings can read and speak seven languages, but in twenty, Allison can say “I heard a rumor,” followed by a dozen phrases, like _that you put your weapon down, that you surrendered, that you turned on your allies, that you did whatever I asked you to, that you stopped, that you killed yourself..._

It’s been very, very useful, this knowledge of her limits, and how to play within them. Allison finds comfort in having them. She has parameters to work around, conditions that must be satisfied to get what she wants. She has _direction_ when she uses her powers, unlike many of her brothers. She’s always been keenly aware of what she can and cannot do with it, and what must be done to maintain her voice to ensure that her power is ready when she needs it.

It’s how she knows that smoking is terrible for her.

It’s why she’s doing it.

There’s someone creaking down the hall behind her. Knowing that stuttering gait, it’s Pogo.

“Miss Allison,” he says, and she rushes to hide her cigarette, suddenly fifteen and caught with one of Klaus’s joints, possessed by the irrational fear that she has been seen, that _Pogo might tell_.

The embers curl like stars around her fingertips as she flicks it over her shoulder, and she hurries to swing her legs back inside.

“I was looking for you,” he is saying, and she folds her arms carefully around her middle.

“How’d you know I was up here?”

“It wasn’t hard. This is always where you used to go when you were upset.”

“Who told you I was…” Ah, yes, of course: “Luther.”

“Actually, it was Miss Vanya.” 

Allison blinks.

“She called to make sure you were okay.” 

_Vanya always knows,_ Allison thinks sourly, pulling herself back through the window, reaching down to pull her heels back on. “Yeah, I said some pretty… unkind things to her.”

“She’s your sister, she knows you didn’t mean it.”

“Doubt it,” she scoffs. She definitely meant it. “She doesn’t know anything about me, which is fine, ‘cause I don’t know shit about her either.”

“Language.”

“Sorry,” Allison dips her head, feeling like a teenager again. She digs her hands deep into the pockets of the outfit she’d changed into for the plane she’d never gotten on. “It’s just been a while since we’ve all been under the same roof.”

He nods sagely. 

Twelve years had gone by so quickly for her, but here, in the house, where time has changed nothing...

“How’d you do it? Alone in this house, for so long?”

“Well, one grows used to things. Even if, sometimes, one shouldn’t.”

Allison nods. She knows a lot about that.

She turns, to be sure her cigarette’s out. It is.

Pogo watches her wryly, then calls upon her to follow him, saying he has something that might put her in a cheerier mood. Allison follows him, sweeping her scarf off the hook she’d left it on and tying it snug as a boa constrictor around her torso. 

Pogo guides her down to Dad’s surveillance room, on the third floor, near his bedroom, placed just beyond a particularly squeaky floorboard that Allison knows was put there by design, to ensure no one would be able to creep past it and gain entry without their father’s knowledge. 

Most families have home movies, while hers has surveillance footage.

But it’s all Allison has, so she takes it without complaint.

It’s weird, being here, staring at the wall of television screens, which peer back at her like a grid of luminous, blue-tinted eyes. She’d never been allowed inside before, has only glimpsed it from the hallway the few times Dad had left the door open.

She likes it. It cements that idea, that Dad is dead and they’re free to go where they please.

Allison cranes her neck, peering at the footage. Klaus, pouring a bit of every container in the bar into an absurdly expensive jungle juice concoction. Diego arguing with Five, Five who is still exactly the same as when he’d been seen in this footage, taken a month before he’d left. Herself and Luther, playing footsie in the basement lounge.

“We’re so little,” Allison breathes, reaching up to run her fingers over the dusty glass, feeling a shiver of static run up her knuckles as she traces the pixelated face of Ben. 

_Oh, I miss him so much…_

And there, off in a forgotten corner screen, forever alone… “Vanya.”

She loosens her scarf, suddenly choked by it.

“I come in here often,” Pogo admits, tapping on the VCR, where a stack of newly-recorded tapes rattle warningly. “I like remembering. I believe it may benefit you, to do the same. Please peruse the tapes at your leisure, but do lock up when you leave. These are far too valuable to lose.”

He hobbles towards the door, and takes a while to leave, but Allison doesn’t turn around. She’s too lost in her memories, and it’s only until her cheek goes numb under the pressure of her palm, which she has pressed on it, that she looks up. Even then, it’s just to start looking for a fresh tape.

She snatches the new-looking one atop the VCR, the one Pogo had carefully suggested she view, the one Reginald had left him with orders to ensure that one of his children see, feeding it into the player, and…

Pales.

It’s Dad. 

She leaves the rolling chair spinning as she hurries off to find Luther. _He’s right,_ she thinks, _he’s right about something being wrong._

When Luther sees what she’s found, he’s in agreement, and the two of them pour over the tapes into the next morning, rewinding and fast-forwarding and scribbling down notes in the margins of their father’s stationary, and tossing theories back and forth. 

It’s just like when they were teenagers, pouring over the details of an old case, and the familiarity of the routine would be comforting, if not for the fact that it’s their father’s death, and their mother’s utter lack of concern as she peers over him and watches him die, that they are viewing.

 _You know, good ol’ wholesome family memories,_ Allison stops herself from joking.

They keep looking, keep circling the same worries through the night and into the morning.

Finally, the champagne spill of dawn snaps them out of their state of constant pacing and squinting, and makes them hungry enough to wander down to the kitchen. 

Where, because the universe has a twisted sense of humor, they run into the suspect in question herself, humming cheerily as she prepares the same smiley-faced breakfasts they’d eaten every day for seventeen years.

They’re not entirely sure, if Mom had in fact killed Dad, if that odd little gesture she made in the grain of the footage was the flick of a poison into his evening tea, or just a twitch of her robotic hand. 

All the same, Allison and Luther both silently agree that they’d rather not eat anything she puts in front of them.

Mom responds well enough, when Luther asks her about the night Dad died, but there’s something so perfectly rehearsed about her lines that puts the both of them off-balance. They’re missing something.

“Were you ever angry with Dad?” Allison asks. 

Slowly, Mom turns, and it’s so quiet that Allison can hear the whirring of the gears around her hips.

“Your father,” Mom says, flashing perfect porcelain teeth, “Was a good man. A kind man. He was very good to me.”

_Okay. That tells us... nothing._

“Yes, but after we all left it must’ve been difficult.” 

“Oh, there were days. You kids kept me oh-so-busy and then.”

Silence.

She doesn’t respond for a full minute, no matter how Allison and Luther prod her, then suddenly, she twitches, proudly announces that breakfast is served, and sets to serving them.

Allison winces. Mom had been designed as a caretaker, and without anyone to care for… well, no _wonder_ she’s like this. She’s spent years puttering around an empty house, looking for children who aren’t there…

She gets up, and heads to the foyer.

Luther follows her, and there, they fall into arguing about what must be done with her.

“She’s hiding something,” Luther insists, and Allison shrugs half-heartedly.

“She just sounded confused.”

“She’s a _robot,_ Allison. She can’t be confused.”

“Sure she can. Wires get crossed, don’t they?”

“That’s different. You saw the tape. Grace definitely knew what she was doing.”

 _Grace,_ Allison processes. _He’s calling her Grace. Only Dad and Pogo call her that._

“Mom,” she corrects, and he shakes his head.

“She’s a machine, Allison.”

“Who read to us and cleaned up after us and put us to bed.” Allison’s eyes are burning, why are they burning? “And we left her here, alone, in this house for twelve years. I mean, can you imagine? Being away from your kids?”

Luther softens. Her mask has slipped, and maybe it’s time to ask: “What happened with Claire? With Patrick?”

“I’m not talking about this.”

“It’s just, when we were kids, we’d come in here and sit on the couches and tell each other everything.”

 _We grew up,_ she thinks. _Things aren’t the same anymore. They’ll never be the same again._

Allison stares down at him, perched on the edge of a couch, so earnest in his beliefs that some things are sacred, that time doesn’t rot everything.

Fine. She’ll tell him.

“Things got ugly, between Patrick and me. And now the court says I have to do this mandatory therapy thing before I can have visitation.”

She leaves out the details of the court case for a reason, but Luther knows her well, and he reads between the lines: The only way that Allison could lose custody of her daughter to such an extent, is if she had _allowed_ it to happen. And the only way Allison would willingly hand over her child and allow such strong barriers to be built up between them is if she had sincerely believed that she deserved them.

Which means: “You used your power on her.”

Allison hangs her head, the taste of ash choking in her mouth.

The words spill out of her. Anything and everything to keep from looking at herself in the mirror for too long: “I mean, there were these days when she’d have these epic meltdowns. And no matter what I said, she wouldn’t stop. She was three, and I know that’s what three-year-olds do, but I just...”

It was supposed to be one time, she’d told herself then. Just once, and then she’d be done.

And then it wasn’t.

But look: “Any mother would’ve done the same,” she says urgently. “I just had an advantage, you know, I...”

Allison goes quiet, stares at her hands, clasped in front of her. 

“I know,” she says, “That it’s not normal. That it’s not right. And I’m trying now, I am. I’m starting over.” 

She slouches, suddenly keenly aware of what she’d done last night alone. “I just didn’t think it’d be so _hard.”_

Luther takes it in, the enormity of what he has learned, of what it says about the woman sitting across from him, and he decides that it will change nothing at all about how he feels about her. He knows Allison, and he knows that she is just as weighed down by the weight of their upbringing as the rest of them.

“It’ll get easier,” he reassures her. “Some things just take time.”

Allison stares down into the lacquered wood of the table between them, at the vague outline of her reflection.

Some things, she fears, just stay broken.

* * *

The Gimbel Brothers’ shootout is a real weird one, that’s for sure. It’s why he’d seen fit to grace the scene with his presence today.

Diego is quite aware that he’s squatting in the middle of an active crime scene, and also quite aware that none of the cops around him are all completely fine with him picking up their evidence and peering at it.

They get it, see. He’d been one of the best recruits the Academy’d had in years, before he’d gone his separate way. It had been a behavioral quirk that had gotten him kicked out, not incompetence. And they don’t want him in a badge, but they sure don’t object to him playing with their toys.

Except, of course, for Eudora, striding up to him, full of righteous fury.

“Do you seriously still not understand the chain of custody?” she asks, and he rolls his eyes, taking care to get his gloved fingers all over the bullets scattered across the linoleum.

Someday, Eudora’ll understand that the chain of custody is only for people who aren’t good enough to solve crimes without it. When that day comes, he’ll be there with a smile, to usher her into the light.

Unfortunately, today is not that day.

“You know, I can’t use this as evidence if your prints are all over it.”

He waves his glove.

“You know what I mean.”

“Let me save you some time on ballistics,” he says confidently, rising to his feet, brimming with ballistics knowledge he’d gained in his years studying forensics under his father. “These nine-millimeters haven’t been manufactured since.”

“1963?”

“Yeah. How--”

“Matching casings were found at a murder scene last night. Ishmael’s Towing.” 

She snatches the bullet out of his hand, and turns on her heel. He keeps pace with her.

“That driver from the diner?”

“Yeah. He was hanging from the ceiling. Looks like he knew who was involved.” 

Diego grins, recalling their conversation a night ago. “Shame no one told you to go talk to him. Guess you were too busy tazing me.”

Eudora sighs, shaking her head. Her low ponytail’s coming loose, and the fluorescents overhead make the shadows under her eyes much darker. “It’s been twenty-four hours, and I’m getting attacks all across town. Whatever this is, whoever this is, they’re not slowing down.”

Something’s coming. Something big. Something Diego’s been waiting for.

“So if you really give a shit, and have any fresh ideas, sure, I’m open to suggestions.”

_Good. Maybe we can actually get something done._

“The kid, in the doughnut shop--”

“Already have people watching the guy’s family.”

_If you have answers already, then why bother asking?_

“Alright, this store have surveillance footage?”

“Doesn’t exist. But get this: the first guys on the premises reported two shooters fleeing, wearing, get this: creepy kids’ masks.”

_Creepy shooters? Sounds like they’re made for me._

“Some city we live in.”

“You don’t get to talk like that, not while you’re dressed in a leather knife harness in broad daylight.”

“Hey now, you used to like it.”

Across the women’s pants aisle, Beeman snorts, and Eudora winces. 

Which, come on now, they _know_ each other. Eudora needs to get over it. She knows he’s not being pushy, right? If any of her coworkers think less of her for it, that’s on them.

“We’re done,” she says, dejected, turning away.

Diego, unable to let her have the last word, calls out, “Yeah, you have fun with your forms while I’m actually out here hunting these animals down.”

She doesn’t turn around. 

_You’ll see,_ he thinks. _I do give a shit, and you’ll see soon enough._

* * *

Allison dresses like she’s going to war. 

She covers herself from the neck down, wears the leather jacket that reminds her the most of her mission uniform, the thick-heeled black boots that make her feel like she could crush skulls beneath their soles.

It feels good, being covered, being in an imitation of the uniform. She has a mission, she has a clear directive, she has something driving her, something she must do. 

Sometimes, slipping into old habits is nice. She knows how to take orders, and she likes it. She likes the sureness of it, the freedom from the burden of making difficult calls. It’s easier to go through life, knowing that she is depended on.

Her mission, as prescribed by Luther, is simple: Go retrieve Vanya, to bring her to the house. They’re having a meeting regarding what to do with Mom, and to Allison’s surprise, Vanya’s getting a vote in the decision-making process.

Surprisingly, it takes longer than expected.

Vanya is incredibly slow in getting back to her apartment, and after about an hour, Allison feels quite stupid, waiting around as she is. She’s tapping her shoe into the damp sidewalk, leering suspiciously up at the flat gray sky and worrying about rain. Chilly humidity has settled in over the city, and tiny flecks of water are spitting down from the sky, prickling on her face.

Then, finally, _finally_ she sees her.

Vanya is strolling up the street, playing with a little… what is that, a doll? A figurine? Whatever it is, she’s rolling it back and forth in her fingers, and she’s… smiling.

Vanya is smiling, talking to a man it’d taken Allison a full minute to realize is actually _with_ her and not just walking next to her. She is smiling, and her voice bounces up the street towards Allison, something about dinner plans.

_Well. This is a development._

Vanya looks up, and recognition flashes in her face. She mouths her name.

Immediately, Allison feels herself wincing, as the memories of the last words they’d spoken to each other rush into her mind.

Best to get this over with. Allison strides over, hands folded protectively around her middle, and Vanya introduces her to her companion, Leonard.

“Wait a second,” he says, pointing with a broad smile on his face, “I know you. You’re in that movie! The movie! You’re the lawyer. The tough one in the wheelchair. Vanya, you didn’t tell me your sister was a _movie star!”_

Pride blooms in Allison’s chest. Oh, she does _love_ being recognized. She can feel her shoulders winding back, her face turning upwards to bask in the light of his attention as he brings up the Umbrella Academy in passing. 

Conversely, Vanya finds herself wilting.

Especially when Leonard mentions that Vanya had never been a part of it.

“I was the fifth Beatle of the family,” she jokes, poorly, wishing for all the world that the sidewalk would open up and swallow her whole.

Leonard seems to notice, Vanya realizes, as he turns to her, and with a wry grin, says that he’d always preferred the Stones to the Beatles anyway.

She blushes.

And suddenly, Allison feels the cold of the spring air around her, biting into her face and bare hands.

“Sorry,” she says, not at all sorry, “But I need you to come to the house. We’re having a _family_ meeting.”

“And you want me there?”

“Not me specifically.”

Vanya winces, and fine, maybe Allison should’ve lied, just a little.

That heavy cloud is hanging between them again. She can’t put a finger on what it is, but she isn’t sure if she wants to. She’d rather pretend it isn’t there. She’d rather walk away.

But. She made a promise to Luther, to bring her here, and she’ll do her part.

“It’s about Mom,” she tries again, and Vanya is suddenly within reach, sighing and asking for a raincheck on dinner, which Leonard politely agrees to.

Leonard slinks off, and Allison peers after him curiously, taking his measure.

He looks… fine. A perfectly ordinary man for a perfectly ordinary Vanya.

“Who’s your _friend?”_ She can’t keep the quirk out of her voice, that particular twist to the word most often employed by teenage girls, eager to find something to dig at. Allison isn’t trying to, but it comes out that way. It’s just second nature to her. 

“He’s not a…” Vanya trails off, staring at a passing car, searching for the right words. For something detached enough to protect herself in case Allison says something. “I’m just trying not to separate myself, from everyone and everything.”

Allison bites her lip. She gets it. _Oh,_ she gets it. But she won’t admit it. Not out here, with passersby, and not to Vanya.

“Look,” she says coolly, “I’m not good at this sister thing.”

“Oh, I noticed.”

_Well. Took you thirty years, but it looks like you finally have some bite now, huh? Some nerve you’ve got, trying it on me._

“Tell me how you really feel,” Allison smiles icily.

“Maybe I will,” Vanya replies, matching her in coldness. 

* * *

Once, near the end of his time in the apocalypse, when Five’s entire body had been winding down, he’d lay in a field of asphodel where a park had once been, feeling his bones ache, wondering when the ‘apocalypse’ was supposed to end and when the ‘post-’ was going to kick in.

It never quite did. He supposes you have to have people around for that, and he’d been the only one.

He thinks of this now, with the glass eye, warm in his fingers from his continued attention. He can’t stop rolling it, around and around between them, like if he sees it from every possible angle, he’ll unlock some unknowable secret that’ll lead him to the source of the calamity.

Five, for lack of a better option, has taken to staking out Meritech’s main entrance in a plumber van he’d liberated from a workman in the alley between the mansion and the nearest separate building this morning.

It’s a shit plan, and he knows it’s a shit plan, and he _hates_ that it’s a shit plan, but it’s not nothing, and Not Nothing is going to have to be enough right now.

And, well. At least Five has experience in stakeouts, from his Academy days, and as recent as his time at the Commission.

The thing is, though, Five’s terrible at waiting.

Even in the apocalypse, he could never do it. In a manner of weeks, he’d been wandering out of the city, out into the wasteland beyond, in search of survivors, of civilization. He’d been a ghost, a restless one, and he’d haunted industriously, in search of the way out. 

At first, to pass the time, he picks up his copy of _Extra Ordinary,_ the one that has a mate somewhere in the depths of the Argyle Street branch of the City Library, where his future self will pluck it out of the ruins if he fails to save the world in seven days, give or take. 

It’s worn, nearly to pieces, with chunks of loose pages falling from the binding. The glue no longer holds, the dedication page had disappeared years ago, and the pages are damn near illegible now, they’re so covered with scrawls in a dozen different types of pen, in pencil, in blood. 

But it’s his, the book that kept him sane, that told him what he was to expect when he came home. It’s the book that told him about Ben, about how the Academy fell apart, about Vanya and what she’d been doing, even if half of it had been a lie.

He flips to the front, to the equation that had carried him home, and stares at it for a while. He’d miscalculated, somehow. He’ll have to go back to his room later, to draw out a piece of chalk and scribble it all out again. 

In the end, he tosses the book with a frustrated growl to the back of the van, and sees about other ways to keep himself from going insane while waiting for a suspicious character in need of a new eye to walk in the front door.

He bounces ideas off Delores, who supplies with much-needed reassurance.

He takes to subsisting solely off of the leftovers he has dug from a trash can within a stone’s throw of the van; really, it’s almost shocking how much _food_ there is in 2019, but what’s really flooring him now is how easily people throw it away. He wastes an hour just stressing about it.

The hours roll on, and Five watches the sun rise and fall into its current state, a late afternoon glow, and there’s nothing.

So far, his leg has fallen asleep three times, his ass has gone numb twice, and he’s lost count of the number of times he’s nodded off already. He’s on the verge of dozing off a third time, when he hears the chatter of a trio of children playing ball in the square just opposite the main building.

He feels his age, all of a sudden, watching them, and his eyes are leaden again, his head heavy and dragging him down into the deep gravity well of sleep. Maybe he’ll dream about them.

He doesn’t, of course. 

Instead, it is of ash, raining down onto his shoulders, and sifting through his hair. It’s the hot, barren glare of the apocalypse, the lick of orange flames against the rubble.

He is among it now, among the sort of chaotic ruin that makes a city dump look like a military camp. He is walking that same exact path he’d once traveled as a teenager, the one that sliced at his legs with knife-sharp rocks. Every chunk of concrete, every fallen pillar, every scattering of glass is the same. There, a discarded bicycle’s wheels turn slowly in the breeze. _There,_ a glittery purple plastic dinosaur is clutched in a molten hand. _There,_ a teal boot with no owner stands in the middle of the street. _There,_ an unmoving boy no older than four is laying facedown on a table. _There,_ past the teenage girl with her golden dress hanging half-off her body, past the bodies laying in rotting heaps, past the pillars is a gloved hand sticking out of the rubble, holding an eye…

 _There,_ to his right, Luther is squeezing himself into the van, calling out his name, recalling the last time he’d been this cramped had been when he’d been crammed into a space shuttle the size of a tin can with Pogo when he’d been fourteen.

Five is back, out of the future, back in his own body again.

“You okay?” asks Luther, taking in his older younger brother’s blanched expression.

Immediately, Five’s shock turns sour. 

“You shouldn’t be here.” Then, it occurs to him: “How’d you find me?”

Luther shrugs, and points over his shoulder.

Five swings around, and is greeted by the sight of Klaus, manhandling Delores.

At once, Five remembers one of the cardinal rules of his childhood: Don’t Tell Klaus Any Secrets.

He hurls an empty cup directly at Klaus’s head, hating the reediness of his voice when he demands that he leave, and growls at Luther to spit out what he wants already, so he might be left in peace. 

“So, Grace might’ve had something to do with Dad’s death. I’m gonna need you to come back to the Academy, alright? It’s important.”

Five could care less, and makes it known. 

“You have no concept of what’s important,” replied the man who’d spent an entire day sitting on his ass in a van, convinced it would save the world. 

Luther proves him right, wasting precious minutes to argue with Klaus about his ability to maintain seriousness in deep, complicated conversations about life and death. Mercifully, Klaus stomps out of the van like a rogue toddler, and leaves the two of them to their conversation. He chooses to prove how responsible he is by shoplifting several armfuls of sugary snacks from the nearest Quick-E-Mart.

“The hell are you up to, Five?”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t understand,” Five sneers, the exact same way he once would when they were children and he’d outdo them in training exercises

“Try me. You know last I checked, I was still the leader of this family.”

“Well, last _I_ checked I’m still twenty-eight years older than you.”

“You know what your problem is?”

 _“My_ problem?”

“Yes, _your_ problem. You think you’re better than us. You always have, even when we were kids. The truth is, you’re just as messed up as the rest of us. But we’re all you have, and you know it. And you’re afraid of it.”

“I don’t _think_ I’m better than you, One,” he scoffs, relishing the way Luther flinches at the sound of his number, pleased that it’s still an effective way to unbalance him, “I _know_ I am.”

Luther, still seeing moondust in the folds of his coat, only nods, and decides to leave him to the ash.

* * *

It’s sunset, and everyone who’s going to show up has shown up. That much is clear. So now it’s time to get this over with.

The pack of them have gathered in the foyer, under the view of their father’s obnoxious portrait. Here, they might deliberate on, to put it delicately, whether or not to put Mom down like Old Yeller. 

Diego’s made up his mind already: Not a fucking chance. He’s had so few good things in this house, and she’s wrapped up in every last one of them. No way is she going to dust too.

They’ve watched that damn tape a dozen times. Of Dad seizing up like a marionette whose master suddenly remembered it ought to be dancing, of Mom staring at him blankly, leaning in to reach for him… it’s burned into his eyelids at this point, and Diego would like to get on with it.

He finds, with great disdain, that he has little choice but to explain that he’d taken their father’s monocle from Mom, that she’d just been cleaning it, is all.

Predictably, the entire family erupts: Klaus cackles, Vanya sighs, Allison sputters in annoyance and then valiantly attempts to reach the bottom of her glass of whiskey as fast as possible.

And Luther feels his fists raising.

 _See?_ Diego thinks, raising a knife to point at him in triumph, and then drawing his arms up to prepare to counter whichever fist Luther throws first. _See? I knew it. I knew you’d overreact._

He’s ready, has his insults ready to fly loose to get this started, fully prepared to utterly obliterate the parlor, when Vanya, ever underfoot, steps between them and snaps at them to calm themselves.

With an adeptness he didn’t expect at all from her, of all people, Vanya smoothly changes the subject, bringing up Mom’s capacity as a caretaker. 

“But,” she points out, “She’s also a protector. She was programmed to intervene if someone’s life was in jeopardy.”

 _Which follows,_ he’ll admit. Mom had been responsible for stitching up most of his more horrific wounds, after all.

And then, naturally, the whole thing spirals out of control again, when Luther concludes that Mom’s protector function must be damaged. That just because Mom isn’t functioning anymore, that she ought to be turned off.

Allison sighs, and voices her agreement with him. Of course she does. A simple fact of life within their family is that when things go to hell, Allison has Luther’s back, always, always, always. 

Diego finds it fucking annoying. It’d sure be nice if she’d have _his_ instead, but _no..._

But that’s beside the point.

Diego, like the rest of his siblings, was raised by a monkey and a wire mother. 

Diego, _unlike_ the rest of his siblings, still firmly believes that as long as a bit of cloth or fur or silicone is laid over the wiring, that it is as good as true.

The votes are cast.

Those for: Luther, Allison (reluctant), (Ben).

Those against: Vanya, Diego, Klaus (out of spite).

And it stalls out in a stalemate, as Luther refuses to let the matter be settled until Five is present. 

So the team dissolves, again.

And Diego’s stopped dead in his tracks, by Mom herself.

She’d been there, in the corner of the parlor, the entire time, and he hadn’t even noticed her at all.

He’s awash with guilt; she’d seen them talking about her so flippantly and…

And she has no reaction at all, simply smiles brightly at him, turns on her heel, and clicks away to bake a tray of cookies to placate them all. She always bakes cookies when she senses an altercation brewing.

“Do you ever wonder,” Vanya asks from behind him, “All those moments with her, all the things she’d said… Was it ever her? Or was it just Dad. I mean, he built her, and he programmed her to be our mom. Sometimes when I look at her, I just see _him.”_

To Vanya, of course, this doesn’t matter much. She’s so hungry for any sort of love, that even the programmed kind is acceptable. 

To Diego, this means the world. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, and being unused to such things, he opts to spit it out.

“She evolved,” he says reflexively.

“How do you know?”

“Dad only loved himself,” he says, but her words stick in him like tar, and they spread like a cancer into his head when he finds Mom on the mezzanine, having totally forgotten about her cookies in favor of peering deep into the dozens of paintings surrounding her charging station, passively tugging at the same cross-stitch she’s been working on for days.

Mom pauses her needlework, staring unblinkingly up at the paintings crowding the wall.

 _When you look at them,_ he thinks, _what do you see? Do they make you_ feel _anything? Do you even understand what they’re_ of? _That there’s a world outside the house?_

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Do you ever think about leaving? The house, I mean.”

“Why would I ever do that?”

“Because you could. Because you could meet people, and go places, and see the world.”

“Why, my world _is_ this house. Why would I ever want to leave it?”

Diego sighs, running his hand through his hair.

“All those things you did for us, for _me,_ when we were kids…” He pauses, contemplates how best to put this, then gives up and goes for it. “Why’d you do it?”

“Because being your mother is the greatest gift of my life.”

Once, that would’ve been enough for him, would’ve made him beam and his chest go warm and his heart soar. But Diego’s thinking long and hard about his childhood now, of all those special squeezes on the shoulder, all those encouraging words when his stutter had kicked in, all those secret extra cookies and slices of bacon at breakfast. How they all seemed to come whenever he was upset, whenever he was needed for something.

_Was that planned, then? Were you made to do that so Dad could get me dependent on you? He knew I hated him, I made no secret of that, so..._

“Is that _you_ saying that?” he wonders, throwing her a lifeline and praying she’ll take it: “Dad’s not here anymore, you know. You don’t have to defend him.”

“Now, now,” chides Mom, “Mr. Hargreeves was a great man. Industrialist, inventor, Olympic gold medalist. He made the world a better place.”

She’s reading off a script, he knows this for a fact. There’s a programmed response in her head, dictating what she must say when he brings up their father in a less-than-negative light. And even now that he’s gone, she’s still stuck to it.

“What a wonderful world she lives in,” Mom says, staring at the Vermeer mounted on the wall in front of her charging station, the cameras in her eyes whirring as she focuses on the artwork. “Do you ever wonder if she’s lonely?”

 _Can you? _he wonders, watching her return to her needlework without a second thought.

* * *

The moon peers down at Luther with its pale, cold face, brilliant against the black dome of the sky.

He wonders, a little stupidly, if it misses him. If that strange void that’s been opened in him might be felt by the moon, by Annihilation Control, sitting empty and gathering moondust in his absence. If it’d held onto a piece of him, and is trying to lure him back into the void, by dangling it just out of reach. If that’s why he feels so adrift.

Allison’s perfume reaches him before she herself does, a soft cloud of jasmine, floating out to brush gently at his great, stooped shoulders.

He slides over, to give her room to crawl out onto the window ledge with him, which she does comfortably. She’s always been able to sit by his side, as his equal, and say nothing at all. It’s an old comfort that she slips into easily, like the embrace of a worn leather jacket that knows the shape of her body.

They sit, Spaceboy and his star, brushing shoulders affectionately for a minute.

He isn’t trespassing, by being in her secret spot in the attic; years ago she’d shown it to him, had pulled him out onto the fire escape with him and taught him how to wrap his hands around the piping on the roof to climb up even higher. They’d pretended they were mountaineers, climbing Everest together, and ever since, he’d known that he was welcome up here. Allison has never needed an escape from him.

“I’ll tell you,” he says, watching her tilt her head up to peer at the moon, “Things were a lot simpler up there.”

They were mundane. Mind-numbingly mundane. The same tasks, day in and day out, a dull, monotonous existence defined by routine and a constant, withering sense of anxiety.

But at least he knew what to do. At least he knew which problems were within his capabilities to solve.

Down here… Well, down here, he really has no idea.

“What’s it like?”

“Quiet,” he admits, smiling in spite of himself. So quiet he could hear his blood sluicing away in his veins sometimes. 

“Cold.” So cold that he’d wake up blue-lipped.

“Lonely.” So lonely that he finds it difficult to talk now, like his words have rusted inside of him from lack of use.

Allison tilts her face, and the moon’s rays reach down to cradle it, casting it in shades of blue and silver.

“Though,” he says, “Every now and then, when the sun comes rolling over the horizon, and the light hits it just so, everything turns to white glass. It’s beautiful. You know, whatever you told Claire, I didn’t really feel like a superhero up there, but those few moments, when the whole world’s glowing, I’d think that _maybe,_ I was meant to be there after all.” 

It’s a hell of a straw to grasp at, but he’d clung to it. Anything and everything to make it all mean something. He was not up there for no reason, see? He hasn’t wasted years of his life, _see?_

“I should have been there with you,” Allison says softly.

“You were.”

Allison had left. She’d gone off into the cold world, and its coldness had gone into her, and she had brought it back with her to the house, but here, for the first time since she’s left, Allison feels warm. 

Then comes the gunfire, from their bedrooms.

And then they’re running.

* * *

One would think that a scrap of napkin with an umbrella scrawled on it, courtesy of one lovely Griddy’s waitress kissing retirement age, won’t lead you far.

But this, to Cha-Cha’s delight and Hazel’s detached amusement, was not the case at all. All it had taken for the pair of them was a single trip to the nearest library, and they’d yielded a gold mine of material on the family whose crest bore the symbol in question.

There’d been countless news articles, magazines, comic books and academic journals, but the crown jewel of it all had been one autobiography by the name of _Extra Ordinary._ It had told them _everything._

They found the house quickly. Fuck’s sake, it’s a stop on the city’s unofficial sightseeing tour, plus the architecture tour, which Hazel wants very badly to attend. There’s that, on top of having that umbrella literally branded into the gate. The Hargreeves family are a lot of things, and _subtle_ is not one of them, and for once Hazel’s grateful. He’d like to get this shit _done,_ thank you very much.

They’d found it, blown the lock clean out of the front door, and slipped in without detection, marveling at how _easy_ it was to walk right in, as though they owned the place.

They came looking for Five, and would instead encounter just about everyone else. They’re definitely not getting that promotion.

The fight is vicious, and it chews up the walls of the children’s hallway, shreds the couches of the parlor, tears up the ground floor, but for a few scattered moments, everything falls perfectly into place.

Years of estrangement fall away, and Luther and Diego and Allison disappear, allowing One and Two and Three to roil up to the surface from where they’d been locked away, deep within themselves. In those moments, they are a team again.

(And, of course, Four is upstairs, blissfully unaware of it all.)

Then, of course, that magic comes to an end, and they scatter. 

And, to put it generously, the fight ends in a stalemate. 

The intruders flee separately, one with the team’s forgotten brother under his arm, the other empty-handed, but for the bragging rights of having dropped a chandelier on the team’s dear leader.

Luther lives, and he’s practically unharmed, but in his haste to pry himself free from the great metal trap that had been sprung on him, he reveals the true shape of his twisted, grotesque body, and promptly turns, and runs to his bedroom like a scared child. 

After a quick sweep of the area, Diego learns that there is one member of the family that had been injured severely. Not that she can tell.

Diego stares. At the bullet holes riddling Mom's torso, tearing right through to the luminous wires beneath, severing some of them entirely.

Sparks are flickering from her chest, like someone's set a fire in the hole where her heart ought to be, but Mom doesn’t notice at all. She keeps sewing, humming a tune that is out-of-tune and buzzing from the speakers in the back of her mouth, drawing the needle through the synthetic skin of her hand as she busily stitches a pattern that is pure nonsense.

 _Too far gone,_ a sharp voice in his head hisses, and he bends to its will.

 _She isn’t real,_ he thinks, stuttering his way through pulling open the control board in her arm, reaching for the switch that will turn her off permanently. _She isn’t real, she isn’t real, she isn’t real, and there's nothing that can be done._

It doesn’t help. It doesn't help at _all,_ and he doesn't understand.

He does it, and then finds a toilet to vomit in.

Then, he rejoins his sisters in the remains of the foyer, where they are licking their wounds in frosty silence.

Allison, perched on the edge of the ruined couch, is tracing a smashed tube of gloss from her pocket over a freshly split lip, smearing the blood into the glitter. It must taste disgusting.

Wordlessly, she hands Vanya a gauze pad, and he stares at her.

She’s pale and trembling, a long red tentacle of blood dripping down from her temple. This is how Diego determines that Vanya had come wandering in from the bowels of the house and gotten underfoot, that her complete lack of instinct had come back to bite them all.

 _If you’d not been here,_ he thinks, _would Mom have been okay?_

The thought makes no sense, but it takes hold of him, and begins to rot. Diego is angry, and he needs a target, and there’s one sitting right in front of him, panting and green around the gills and traitorous. So he takes it.

“How’d they know,” asks Vanya, “About us? Why were they here?”

Allison shrugs, staring off towards the staircase, lost in thought.

 _Us,_ he thinks sourly, about to make a comment, about to flay her open with his words, to distract himself from his own pain with hers, when he pauses.

There’s a book, in the middle of the floor.

Diego frowns, and reaches down to pick it up.

It’s a library copy of _Extra Ordinary_ , with post-it notes marking pages about each and every one of them. He flips the cover open, and learns it had been checked out today.

Their powers, their personalities, and their address are all public knowledge, Diego knows. There are dozens of ways the pair could’ve learned about them. But Diego doesn’t think about that. He sees the book, and _only_ the book, and the mess it had made of his life has come back again, resurrecting old pains and insecurities he has no time or patience for.

And now, it could’ve killed them all.

He throws it at Vanya, and it bounces off her shoulder, exactly as he’d intended it to.

“Diego, what the hell?” snaps Allison, who then glances down at the book, where it’s fallen between Vanya’s feet, blinks, and snatches it off the floor.

“Her book,” he spits, “That’s how they knew how to fight us. Vanya, your book could’ve gotten us _killed.”_

Allison turns it over in her hands, and thinks. About her fight with the female assassin in the basement, how she’d held up initially but decided, after taking a few choice hits, that she’d rather get it over with. About unleashing her power on the woman, calling out that she’d _heard a rumor that she dropped her weapons and surrendered…_

About how the woman had done no such thing. Because _somehow,_ she’d known to wear a soundproof helmet.

Allison stares at the book. At the scattering of bulletholes marring Five’s portrait.

 _That could have been any of us,_ she thinks.

“Dammit, Vanya,” Diego’s shouting, “We could have all died because of _you!”_

Vanya looks to Allison for support, but her sister is looking away, biting the inside of her cheek.

She gets up, and goes, painfully aware of how unwanted she is among them. 

No one stops her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hate this chapter too because of the repetition, but again, it needed to be here for the purpose of setting shit up later on.


	3. with the heartbreak open

Originally, the story goes, Dad had wanted a vast mansion a few hours outside the city, but for one reason or another, he had decided upon consuming an entire city block. Klaus likes to imagine it’d been down to the flip of a coin: it’d landed on _heads,_ and so the Hargreeves settled in Midtown.

He spent a lot of time as a kid, wondering what it’d have been like had the proverbial coin landed on _tails._ What it’d have been like to grow up with a wash of green outside every window, instead of dingy brick and glass. Being able to go outside and smell the trees, instead of the stink of the streets. A gate high enough to keep out the worst of the fangirls, and far enough away so he’d be able to sit on the front steps without being blinded by a blitz of camera flashes.

It’d be quieter, he supposes. No drone of traffic, no chatter of crowds.

Fewer ghosts, out in the woods.

As a boy, Klaus hated Dad for choosing the city. For choosing the _noise._

Once he’d grown up, and the veil of fame had started lifting from his eyes, however, he came to change his mind. 

At ten, he’d been obsessed with the thought of a driveway so long the cameras wouldn’t be able to so much as see the house from the end of it, the thought of something as unthinkable and dreamlike as privacy. At seventeen, he’d come to realize the downside of such a driveway; it’d be the kind you see on the news, with barefoot teenagers sprinting into the bright glare of headlights with pale faces and teary eyes...

… Yeah. Living square in the middle of the city’s probably for the best.

If the Academy’d been out in the woods, he imagines, it’d be practically impossible for him to have slipped out. On his own, in search of a few hours of freedom. With Diego and a guitar under his arm, bound for a grimy bar his brother had chosen to be the first gig of the band they’d had for exactly six weeks. With the whole lot of them, bound for Griddy’s on those few wonderful nights they’d shared as preteens, right before things got even worse.

In the city, it’d been remarkably easy, even as a teenager, to slip out for a few hours. And now, as an adult, he can come and go as he pleases, and it pleases him now to return every few weeks or months for an hour or a day in between rehab or lovers or clubs or whatever he’s up to at the time.

He’d even made a game of it; whenever Mom would register his presence as regular enough to warrant making up his bed, he’d leave, just to keep the ol’ droid on her toes. To prove to Dad that he wasn’t staying. That no one would be able to predict when and for how long he’d be back.

The downside of this, he’s now realizing, is that it’s very hard to keep track of him, that his tendency to flicker like a shadow in and out of the house at such odd hours has made it pointless to expect him to stick around.

Which makes his current predicament a little bit of a fuck-up on his part.

Whoops. Sue him. It’s not like _he_ expected to get bagged by a pair of snazzily-dressed hitmen who’d chosen to invade his house, override the unbreakable spell of the _Private Property: No Trespassing_ sign bolted to the gate, and strolled right through to unload a spray of gunfire on his family while he’d been taking a bath.

 _(Honestly._ So much for the old quack’s world-class security system. If he’d known it was as substantial as a length of twine around an elephant’s foot, can you _imagine_ the shit he’d have been up to as a teenager? _Talk_ about missed opportunities.)

If he _had_ expected to spend his evening hog-tied in the trunk of a rental car that smells of french fries, gasoline and questionable life decisions, he’d have certainly thought to dress in something a little more substantial than a bath towel. _Two_ bath towels, maybe. A robe? Note to self: ask Ben about it. For a kid who’d been real quiet in life, he’s sure got nothing _but_ opinions these days.

Anyway. Here he is, contemplating fate, while duct taped to a cheap motel chair, staring at a cheap armoire with a stack of empty takeout boxes from Wok ‘N’ Roll. Maybe if he’s a good boy, he’ll get a fortune cookie later. He’d kinda like an indication from the universe as to how this is going to end, because right now, with his face turning purple from the weight of the garrote being twisted around his neck, he’s admittedly not feeling too great about his prospects.

… Honestly, he’s had a couple of dreams like this, but they always ended considerably more pleasurably.

He’s getting there, though. That rush of blood from one head is flying straight down to the other one, and you know what, silver lining: he might actually get some _release_ from this...

Then comes the exclamation of disgust from Lady Hitman as she realizes exactly how close Klaus is to enjoying something for once in his life, and naturally decides to whip it away from him. Bitch!

Klaus gasps raggedly, a pleasant rush of air flooding into his lungs. There really _is_ nothing quite like a little strangling to get the blood flowing.

He’s giggling, in spite of himself, and the slap to the head from Lady Hitman’s partner does nothing to alleviate that odd, masochistic rush of pleasure he’s getting.

It’s a couple things.

One: Klaus is, as anyone who’s ever spoken to him for more than ten minutes will admit, a tried-and-true masochist, and what can he say, the way his heart’s kicking in his chest after a good tiedown just _does_ it for him. He, for one, blames the many afternoons spent being trained to escape various knots and rope materials during the very formative thirteenth year of his life.

Two: Klaus _gets_ this. Not the exact situation; he’s had his tortured-by-hitmen cherry popped on this fine morning, but the _danger_ of it all. The fact is that he’d left home with everyone else, but never quite settled in the Real World, always in a constant state of migration. He’s never held down a job, not that he wants one, or an apartment, not that he wants one. He likes to travel, likes the stimulation of new places and people and things.

He’s also afraid. Of the ghosts, and of himself. 

The thing is, Klaus is just not very good at real life, and long ago he’d accepted the awful truth that it’s too late for him to learn. He’d taken it into himself, and let it rot there, and filled the hole it left with substances and experiences bright and loud and brash enough to distract himself from it.

But this? Being duct-taped to a chair and tortured? The fatigue of a sleepless night setting in, the stink of sweat and the metallic tang of blood caught in his nostrils? The particularly unique mix of hilarity and humiliation that is having a hitman readjust your towel over your family jewels?

Well. He can actually _handle_ this.

Case in point: He’s been here for what he’s guessing is about ten hours, judging by the position of the sun in the sky outside the dingy window, and they’ve learned absolutely _nothing._

Klaus, not in the habit of honesty, has discovered he’s quite difficult to break. He’s prone to tossing important info out recklessly, yet he’s able to hide them here, and honest to God, if his siblings had only known that torture of all things would be what makes him a worthy steward of their secrets, they’d probably trust him with more of them. Oops? His bad?

He tells the Hit Crew as much, that no one tells him anything, that no one will miss him, that, oopsie-daisies, looks like they kidnapped the wrong guy.

To which they respond with lackluster waterboarding; here distinguished as such because Klaus has taken Waterboarding 101 at the Academy, and Dad did a much better job with it than these chucklefucks. 

Well. Lemons into lemonade, he _could_ use a drink. So, Klaus starts slurping.

They stop, and retire to the bathroom to bicker like a pair of parrots over the last nut in the cage. Jeez, they really _are_ shit at this, aren’t they?

There’s an awful prickling starting in his skin, like the chair he’s taped to is ridged with a thousand needles that are digging into his back and arms and legs and ass and…

Oh shit.

“Withdrawal’s starting, huh?” asks Ben, now far more than his second shadow, now distinct enough to make out every detail of his blue-tinted face.

And there, somewhere behind him, chattering that’s sounding less and less like it’s coming from some distant space underwater, and more like it’s ten feet behind him.

“Who’s the dead babushka?” asks Ben, far too blase about it all.

Oh. Russian. That explains the gibberish. _Well, that’s on me for sleeping through Russian class. Jokes on me for thinking Latin was more interesting anyway._

Okay. Focus on something else, on… There’s a crack in the wall shaped a little like a finger pointing. He cranes his neck, seeing what God’s so insistent about him seeing.

His captors yell, and he decides not to push it.

Gee, _thanks_ God. See, _this_ is why he doubts Your existence. 

They’re back in view, in those fabulously impractical Halloween masks that he sincerely doubts they can see a damn thing out of… with his coat.

Wait. _Wait, waitwaitwait…_

Lady Hitman pokes into his pocket and… fuck. Oh, fuck. Those are _his_ drugs, bought fair and square with _his_ dad’s signet ring and watch chain and engraved book-box. It feels like they’ve driven glass under his fingernails, when they toss the little baggies back and forth, drop them to the filthy green carpet and begin crushing them underfoot.

_Okay. Okay, we can still come back from this. I can still snort it.... Okay. Nope. Nope I cannot do that. This is too far._

“Do you want money?” he tries, “My dad’s _loaded,_ you know. And if it’s not cash you want, we’ve got… let’s see, taxidermied rhino heads? A tortoiseshell toilet seat? Caviar? Amputee hookers?”

“Klaus,” warns Ben. “Be strong.”

Klaus hates Ben, maybe just a tiny, microscopic little bit. 

And then, they whip out the edibles and _sweet Jesus, not the chocolate!_

Klaus’s resolve evaporates.

“Okay. Okay, here: I don’t know where Five is, alright, I’m not lying about that. But he hasn’t been making much sense since he came back!”

“Elaborate.”

“I mean, he’s been acting like a lunatic! He’s been sitting in this van in front of that… what do you call it, that lab? Looking for the owner of some fake eyeball.”

“Eyeball?”

“I don’t know? Something to do with the end of the world? I’m telling you, he’s nuts!”

It’s enough for them, whoever they are, so thankfully, he doesn’t have to watch his wealth destroyed in front of him.

Un-thankfully, it leaves him crammed in the closet, with a strip of tape over his mouth and nothing but Ben for company. The door slams behind the pair, heading off to God-knows-where to do God-knows-what.

Fuck, the least they could’ve done is topped him off before they went. His entire body’s covered in gooseflesh, and Klaus can’t tell if it’s the draftiness of the closet, his current state of undress, the withdrawal kicking in even harder, or the terrible knowledge that once he’s all the way there, then will come the thunderous chorus of spirits, rumbling around him, the noise so loud it’ll seize him by the bones and make him shake. 

Klaus had always clung to his vices like a life preserver. Now, it’s slipped from his fingers, and he’s been left bobbing, unable to do so much as swim to safety.

And now, the ghosts are circling in, sharks who’ve smelled his blood in the water.

* * *

Once, when he was ten, Diego had fallen asleep on the flat stone bench in the rooftop garden, among the pots of thyme and clove and cabbage and rhubarb that Mom had maintained. He’d woken up freezing, the night chill having soaked into his bones.

This is how he feels now, lying on Eudora’s doorstep, having slept lightly and fitfully the whole night through, his fingers twitching guiltily, recalling what they’d done hours ago.

“Who’d you piss off this time?” snarks Eudora, bursting out of her duplex to find him here. Again. She’s too used to his presence, to his tendency to show up unannounced with fresh wounds he’s in the process of licking, to offer much of a reaction.

(Look. It’s not that he makes a habit of sleeping on her stoop like a stray cat. He most definitely does not want her to pet him and tell him he’s a good boy. It’s just that this is a safe neighborhood to let your guard down in, and her front step happens to be very, very comfortable.)

“I gave as good as I got,” he boasts, rolling up off his back, and wincing at the popping in his spine as he does so.

Eudora rolls her eyes, stooping to hand him her coffee mug, which he accepts gratefully, sipping and staring at the dappled pattern of shade from the oak tree outside her duplex. 

“How’s that paperwork coming?”

“Real page turner. I’ve got two guys in children’s masks, rare bullet casings, a rare fingerprint from a cold case in the ‘30s, and get this: that tow truck driver doesn’t have any family.”

“The boy.” As Diego says the words, he suddenly gets it.

_What the hell, Five?_

“Not his, apparently. Kid’s our only possible witness, and he’s a complete mystery.”

Diego sips thoughtfully. Best to keep this to himself. The family’s better off handling this internally. God knows the cops won’t be able to take care of it.

“What’s going on?” Eudora crosses her arms. “You could’ve called me for an update, so why’re you really here?”

“Nothing, I…” Diego swallows.

He knows better, than to lie like this. Eudora knows him too well.

“My mom. She died last night.”

Eudora drops down to sit beside him, murmuring a sincere apology.

She knows a lot about Mom, what with how much Diego had gone on about her, but he made it a point to never introduce them. Their relationship, intense as it had been, had never lead to a point where he took her to meet the family. To be perfectly honest, Diego was worried that they’d drive her away.

Turns out, he’d been enough to do that all himself.

“It’s just…” He’s crying. Fuck, he’s crying, why the hell’s he crying? Why’s he being so weak? “I don’t know how to…” He feels the overwhelming urge to drive his fist into the stone pillar propping up the porch, but it wouldn’t do, to do that in front of Eudora.

Her hand finds his wrist, and squeezes it gently.

“Tell me what’s happening. How’d she die?”

Diego feels heat burning in his face. “I didn’t get a good look at their faces.” 

“You went after the guys in the masks.”

He rolls his eyes. “First off, I didn’t _go after them,_ and one’s a woman, by the way, fun fact.”

“I specifically told you not to follow them.”

“I _didn’t,”_ Diego snarls, “They came to _my_ house, looking for my _brother._ They tried to kill my _family._ They hurt my _mom.”_

“Why?”

Diego shrugs. “Look, he’s been missing since yesterday. He needs to be found.”

“Listen, I can handle that.”

There she goes again. If he leaves Five in her hands, it’s a guarantee he’ll end up dead, or he’ll be long gone by the time she sniffs up his trail.

His disdain’s showing on his face. Eudora’s frowning at him. “You’re not equipped--”

He scoffs. Everyone just loves telling him what he can and can’t do, huh? “You know, you oughta just try things my way. Just this once.”

Eudora scowls at him. _“Your_ way.”

“Yeah, _my_ way. The way that gets results.”

“If your brother’s in trouble, I highly doubt that whipping a knife down an alleyway’s the best way to handle the situation.”

“And I highly doubt that checking boxes on a form is going to bring him home, either.”

“Well. It’ll make sure that the people who took him, if they did take him, stay locked up once we catch them.”

“Assuming you catch them.”

Eudora huffs, rising to her feet, off to take the slow path to justice.

Diego shakes his head. “No wonder we didn’t last.”

“Yep,” Eudora replies coldly, swinging her bag over her shoulder. She’s halfway down the path, when she pauses, turning on her sensible heels. He expects one last jab, one last slice at him, and he’s ready with a counter-remark. Something low and vicious, that'll shut her up for good. Something that'll make damn sure he won't leave the fight without having drawn blood.

Instead, she looks at him, long and sad, and tells him she’s sorry about his mother. 

Then she’s walking again. He doesn’t follow her.

* * *

Vanya’s apartment is simply the dingiest place Allison’s been to in years. It’s damp, with mildew stains on the walls, and the old lady across the hall from the apartment that’s supposedly Vanya’s, according to the address scrawled in her notebook, is jabbering in Polish so loudly that Allison can make out the details of her conversation through the wall.

In short, it’s hardly the sort of place Allison would want to be seen in. God forbid any photographers see her here.

Honestly, Vanya’d better thank her for bothering to come all the way down here in a seven-hundred-dollar leather jacket. She’d even done her hair for this.

Allison hasn’t had a great day so far. She’s overslept into the afternoon, and rescheduled yet another flight. She’d crammed her foot as far into her mouth as it could possibly go when she’d tried to reach out to Luther about his mutation. 

She needs an easy win, and this is going to be it.

Mom’s dead. She and Luther had found her robotic shell this morning, and she’s dead. And those freaks who’d invaded the house killed her. And Vanya has to know. She won’t be happy to see her, after last night, but she has to know.

Allison has the speech fully prepared in her head, but it goes flying out her ears when she realizes that her sister’s door is ajar.

Immediately, Allison’s mind moves to the invaders. 

_They’re back,_ hisses the paranoid voice in the back of her head, the one that’d kept her alive on countless missions in her teen years. _They’re here, and they’re here to kill you._

Allison begins walking on her toes as she enters, scanning carefully for Vanya, who does not appear to be here.

 _An ambush,_ she decides, when she hears a toilet flush, and the sink running somewhere down the hall.

When the intruder comes around the corner, tugging his jacket over his shoulders, Allison is ready, catching him by the shin with the toe of her heel and sending him face-down onto the floor. She’s got her fist raised, ready to jab it into the soft space where his head meets his neck, when--

“Leonard?”

Shit. She just beat the crap out of Vanya’s new boyfriend.

Allison recoils immediately, sputtering an excuse. Then, it occurs to her: “Where’s Vanya?”

“At rehearsal.” Leonard tugs himself to his feet, reaching into his pocket. “She left her keys at my place last night. I’m just returning them.” He jingles the keys.

“So why are you _inside_ her apartment?” 

There’s a rumor pushing at the inside of her lips, itching to burst out and get the answer, but she doesn’t need it. Leonard’s response is immediate: “I’m leaving her a surprise.”

“A surprise?”

“Yeah. In there.” He points to her bedroom, and Allison immediately stalks over to it.

Inside, on her bedside table, is a vase full of fresh, store-bought roses, with a card propped up by their fleshy petals. Drops of water have spilled down the petals and made a small puddle on the table.

Oh. Well then.

_Wow. That’s… actually kind of sweet._

“Why are _you_ here?” Leonard asks from behind her, having followed her into the room, and Allison decides immediately that she doesn’t like him. _He’s_ the interloper here, not her. _She’s_ Allison’s sister, if anyone has a right to her space, it’s _her_ , and not _him._

 _“Excuse_ me?” she snaps.

“Well, from what Vanya told me last night, you don’t want anything to do with her.”

The words sting. Vanya's spoken about her, behind her back. To a new boyfriend, of all people.

_Oh, big surprise, given what she wrote about me five years ago._

“This is none of your business.”

“Alright. Well, I guess I’ll drop by the Icarus, and give these to her.” The keys jingle in his fingers, and Allison’s hands are burning with the impulse to tear them out of his hands.

Allison rakes her eyes up and down him, and tries not to look underwhelmed. There’s something about him that’s just _wrong._ That’s _fake._

“Actually,” Allison says, _“I’ll_ take them to her. I need to speak to her anyway, and seeing as you’re _done_ here...”

He picks up on it.

“Right,” he says, handing them to her, his mouth pressed in a terse line. “Sure. Whatever’s easiest.”

He’s out the door, and Allison waits in the doorway for a while, watching his shape fade into the dozens of others out on the street.

An hour later, Allison’s outside the Icarus Theater, tapping her toe in impatience as her sister dawdles along inside with her violin practice.

And her shitty day turns shittier.

There’s a copy of _StarWeek_ pinned to a magazine kiosk, and Patrick and Claire are staring out at her from the front cover, smiling brightly in a color-corrected world where everything’s just fine and beautiful, in the world Allison had always thought she’d lived, up until a few months ago.

Allison tears it down, and feels her gut clench at the title: _We’re Doing Fine!_

She swallows roughly, crumpling the pages in her fingers. 

_No you’re not,_ she thinks weakly. _You still need me. I’m not..._

Enough. She can’t look at this trash. _No_ one can.

**“I heard a rumor that you don’t sell these anymore.”**

The kiosk worker nods, and begins rifling through his wares, to start tugging them down.

Allison sighs. Good. No one’ll see it. _She_ won’t have to see it. She… She’s fucking terrible.

She digs through her purse for a smoke. 

Allison has a cigarette balanced on her lip, and has her hot pink lighter in her hands, ready to spark it up, when she turns just enough to realize that she’s being stared at by Vanya.

Her practice had finished, and behind her, a stream of orchestra members is dissolving into the scattering of people returning to their jobs at the tail end of lunch hour. She’s hunched under the weight of her instrument, staring at her warily.

Allison quickly spits her unlit cigarette into her purse, and glares up at Vanya.

_Say something about it. I know you want to._

She doesn’t, because she’s Vanya.

She just stands there, playing with the strap fastening her violin to her back with her pale, calloused fingers, the light spring breeze playing with strands of her low ponytail. That dark cloud of uncertainty’s brewing between them again.

Allison decides to go with what she’d originally sought her out for, with something strong enough to pull focus away from what she’s just done: “I wanted to be the one to tell you, about Mom.”

Vanya follows her lead. “What happened?”

“She died.”

“What? I thought...”

“It was those psychopaths last night. They killed her, and we found her this morning.”

Last night.

God, last night. What a mess. She should’ve at least put up a token effort, pretended to chase after her. Maybe it would’ve spared her the look Vanya’s giving her now.

“Listen, what happened after that fight...”

“It’s fine.” It’s clearly not. 

Allison shoves her lighter back into her purse, and, “Oh. Here.” 

She shoves aside loose tubes of makeup, tampons and a beach read, tugging out Vanya’s keychain.

Her sister blinks, accepting them tentatively, a question on her lips.

Which will only lead to more questions. Great.

“Do you want a drink?” It’s the only way Allison can think of, to warm the space between them, and Vanya nods, a little uncertainly.

They take up at an upscale bar, the kind of place that’s a step down for Allison and a step up for Vanya. Neutral enough territory, that they’re mutually uncomfortable in, that they’re mutually agreeing to drink a little too much in.

As the alcohol settles in, making everything warmer and softer-edged, she finds it so much easier to talk to Vanya, to hiss at her about her boyfriend and whimper about Luther.

It’s so strange, this thing they’re doing. It feels like they’ve stumbled into an alternate universe, into one where they actually got along as girls, where they were ordinary sisters from an ordinary family, where Allison isn’t so famous that she has to sign an autograph halfway through their chat, where they live in the same city, and meet up every month at this very bar, to talk about inane things like men and Vanya’s bitchy coworker who didn’t bother to show up to an important rehearsal.

Vanya even seems _happy_. Maybe it’s the drink, maybe it’s the man, maybe it’s that they aren’t in the house. Whatever it is, it suits her.

This alternate world that they’ve stumbled into, Allison wants to live in it.

 _It’s so nice, so easy to pretend,_ Allison thinks, drifting into Vanya’s apartment after dark, with her heels dangling loosely from her fingertips. 

_We don’t have to though,_ she realizes. _There’s no reason why we can’t just keep doing this._

She finds that she wants it. She wants it so deeply that her heart aches.

As Vanya wanders off to her bedroom, Allison digs into a bowl of chocolate-covered raisins on her counter, and the thought that the both of them have bad taste in men, and worse taste in dessert makes her cackle. It’s her _real_ laugh, the crowish one that isn’t at all breathy and soft, the one she doesn’t rehearse in the mirror for an hour before an interview, the one she keeps hidden.

Vanya walks out, pink-faced and grinning, an explosion of flowers in her hands.

And Allison remembers.

“Oh yeah,” she says, wobbling against the counter, letting the bowl clatter to the chipped linoleum. “I forgot about those.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” The words bubble out of Allison’s mouth, “I got the keys from him today. He was leaving that for you. Oh, this is so funny, Vanya, I knocked him over!”

“You what?”

“I kicked him!” Allison’s giggling, stupid as a schoolgirl. Maybe she shouldn’t have had that third drink.

The warmth fades, then. As drunk as they are, the habits that’ve been carved into them run far deeper. Neither of them knows how not to be what they were raised to be.

“I don’t like him,” Allison says sharply. 

Vanya holds the little handwritten card crammed in among the flowers close to her chest. “Did you rumor him?”

“What? No.” 

Vanya’s mouth presses in an uncertain line, and every part of her goes rigid.

“Okay,” she says, cool as ice.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she doesn’t believe her.

Allison, sitting on the counter and playing with her lighter, watches her sister chat on her landline to her dull, dull boyfriend. Vanya's back is pointedly to her, and she's pretty certain that's Vanya's way of kindly asking her to leave. Which, she will. In a second. The space between them has opened wide again, and Allison, chasing that warmth they'd had moments ago, finally finds the bravery to peer down into that chasm for the first time and see what’s lurking at the bottom of it.

She thinks she gets it now.

 _It’s the power,_ Allison finally realizes. _Vanya’s afraid of it._

There’s a flash of white-hot pain against her thumb, and Allison curses. She’s burned herself.

* * *

Being caught in a dark, narrow space isn’t exactly doing wonders for Klaus’s mental well-being. Not that this whole situation has been particularly great for it either, but he has _history_ in these spaces, you see. The ugly kind, that roils out of his subconscious whenever he’s sober, that’s always lurking like death around every corner. The sea is deep and dark, and if you stop swimming, you’ll drown, or something bigger will come along and find you, and the worst place you could possibly be, is stuck in a cave.

Which, for all intents and purposes, he is.

He has to keep reminding himself, that it isn’t the same. That it’s not cold, in this closet, but uncomfortably humid. That it’s not stone he’s leaning up against, but cheap pine with a heady scent that mixes with that of his sweat to make a uniquely disgusting combination. That it’s not pitch-black, but the thin golden bars of light from the slats in the door are enough to make out the grayish outlines of coat hangers and the ironing board. That he’s not locked in a mausoleum, but in a third-rate motel closet.

Fine. He’s _fine._ See how fine he is, Ben?

(Ben does not. Instead, he places his ghostly hands on Klaus’s shoulders, and keeps repeating that mantra he’d picked up in group therapy at rehab. Honestly, since Ben’d started tagging along with him there, he’s gotten a lot more annoying. What does he think he is, a camp counselor?)

Some of the advice is nice, though. Not that he’ll admit it.

He does the best he can: Breathe in. Breathe out. Steady does it. Ignore the pure agony that is withdrawal. The old, burning ache of his body giving up on him, the familiar drizzle of watery snot leaking from his nose, the dense cloud of wool in his head, and oh, how he’d _love_ to fall back in his chair and sleep…

Yeah. No. This sucks. He’s jonesing _hard._

When the hitmen come back, he’s almost happy to see them. They’ve even removed their masks, and, seeing their faces, he can now say without a shadow of a doubt that in a few days, Stockholm Syndrome will definitely set in. 

Then, the tape over his mouth is ripped off so roughly that it tears the chap from his lips, and he decides that maybe he’d rather not thank them after all. He adds a week to that count, for good measure. 

“Can’t we call it a night?” he croaks, “I gave you what you wanted.”

“We _wanted_ your brother.” 

Klaus glances at Ben, who winks.

“Right. Okay. Can I offer you a substitute?”

“We left Number Five a message. And when he comes for you, we’ll be ready.”

Klaus wants to say something, but all the words are heavy and knotted in his throat. He’s whirled around to face the door, hears the shuffling of the pair as they slip into place. Watches the greenish lights overhead flick off, and the shadows race up to lick at his shoulders. The _slam_ of the kitchen door sharpens into the _clang_ of a wrought-iron gate and… Well. This sucks. This really, really fucking sucks.

Ben’s by his side, kneeling and watching him quietly.

And, unfortunately, so is Babushka.

She’s wandering in wide circles throughout the room, and if she’s this close to him, then the others will be here soon enough; he can already see shadows where there ought not to _be_ shadows, swaying slowly, gathering at the edges of the room to take a step closer.

Babushka catches a flash of neon from the sign outside, illuminating an enormous, gaping welt in the side of her head.

_Gee, thanks. Sure needed that._

“She’s one of their victims,” realizes Ben. “See? How she’s looking at them? We can _use_ this.”

He’s _right,_ Klaus realizes. 

Each of his siblings had coped in their own way, with the clusterfuck that had been their childhood. Luther and Diego got big and brutish, Allison got vicious, Five took to the wind like a bird of prey and up and flew away, Ben tried to make himself as small as possible. Vanya did… whatever Vanya did.

Klaus had opted for a subtler approach. He’s not as strong as them, not as fast, not as powerful, not as able to vanish into the woodwork. He can fight, he’d been trained for it after all, but his first impulse has always been to cut and run, and when running’s not enough and he’s well and truly cornered, well, then he’ll puff himself up and start snapping. He’s a hunter, like the rest of them, but he’s far more comfortable scavenging. 

It’s how he made his way for years upon years; it’s why Klaus assumes that Five had chosen him for Whatever That Was at that lab a few days back. Klaus doesn’t have Allison’s compulsion, but he doesn’t need it; if he just says the right things, and presses the right buttons, he knows he can strike gold. The most valuable lesson his father had ever taught him was how to find those strings of vulnerability clinging to a person, and tug at them. How to find that weak point and gnaw at it until he tears through.

 _Say something,_ he orders himself. _Say something awful, something that’ll make their skins crawl, that’ll make them run like rabbits, that’ll make them eat each other._

The weakness he’ll exploit is obvious. Two hitmen, with an undoubtedly extensive resume. With the dead clinging to them like a bad smell. Something had to have gone wrong somewhere.

And, _well._ Klaus hates talking to the dead, but he sure does hate the thought of being dead a lot more.

So fine. He’s game. 

Klaus swallows once, thickly.

Then he turns to Babushka, and asks her name.

“Zoya Popova.”

Well. That was easy. “Oh, that’s a lovely name, Zoya Popova.”

The hitmen mutter among themselves, the high, quivering tones of two children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. He’s in business.

“You know, she’s _really_ pissed at you guys.”

And so it begins.

The thing about talking to the dead is that if you indulge one, all the others start to press in, in a tide of light and shadow and churning voices. It’s one of the many reasons why Klaus avoids acknowledging them whenever he can; it’s tantamount to opening your front door after the tsunami outside has sent six feet of water barreling down your street. 

Funnily enough, Ben’s a bit of an exception. All the other ghosts have always kept their distance around him. Maybe they can tell what he’s packing under that hoodie. Maybe they’re afraid of it too. Which has a few uniquely horrifying implications that he and Klaus mutually agreed to file under Never Discuss Ever.

This is why, Klaus supposes, that Ben is keeping a hand on Klaus’s shoulder; his presence is enough to keep the waves from crashing over Klaus’s head.

The flood comes.

An Englishman with hands so mutilated they look like crab claws. A shirtless tow truck driver. A Chinese woman with a gaping hole in her throat. A creature, clad in satin and lace, with a jaw hanging down by her collarbones. A dozen others frothing in a blur of gory faces, scattered words from languages he knows, the liquid tongues of a few he doesn’t, moaning and rattling, each ghost’s noise feeding into the next…

“Shut up!” he cries, “Shut up! _Shut. Up.”_

Jesus. They’re worse than the drugs.

He picks through the noise, looking for something, anything…

Here we go. A portly guy in a big white sweater, with his guts hanging open, bearing a striking resemblance to a desecrated Christmas ham’s.

“Which one are you?” he asks the husky fellow who turns his chair around. “Cha-Cha or Hazel?”

“Hazel.”

“Jan Mueller? Remember him? Swiss Alps. Him and his wife were coming back from a ski trip.”

He’s struck gold. Hazel’s face has gone white, and Cha-Cha is nodding, confirming the method of murder Mueller had just suggested to him: “Forward. Reverse.”

“Yeah! That’s it!” He returns his attention to Hazel. “His wife escaped down an alleyway. Mueller says to say thanks.”

“What’s he talking about?” Cha-Cha’s voice is low and serious.

“I don’t know.”

There it is. The wedge. Time to get to hammering.

“He’s so grateful to _you,_ Hazel, for sparing his wife. You know, there’s hope for him yet, don’t you think?”

Behind him, Ben high-fives one of the victims.

The hitmen retreat to the bathroom, to snarl at each other some more, and the rough tones of their argument bounce off the cheap tile out to him. Klaus rattles off a peal of impish laughter and cranes his neck for another ghost to call on.

* * *

Five wasn’t in the mansion when Diego had come calling. 

Unfortunately, Luther _had_ been, and, seeing as the two had the same goal, they’d suffered a full day of searching in one another’s presence. 

It’d been uneventful, punctuated by constant, circular driving around and around the streets surrounding the mansion, by watching Luther cram his oversized torso into his front seat and praying that the leather wouldn’t be damaged after he crawled out. 

And by constant, _constant_ arguing. As men who are in deep denial about themselves, but are able to clearly see one another for who they are often do, they cannot stand each other. Everything becomes the subject of argument: whose fault it was for Luther’s condition, whether leaving or staying had been the correct response to their brother’s death, which road to turn left at, whether to stop at Costello’s for lunch, or skip it altogether.

By the time they’d gotten to the van Five had stolen, he’d been gone for some time. They’d spent only a few minutes rifling through his castoffs: fast food wrappers, maintenance maps covered with scrawled equations the likes of which Luther, despite years of physics lessons in anticipation of the days he’d spend orbiting the earth, simply could not decipher. 

And finally, Diego had found it: A deeply distressed copy of That Book, that looks like it’d gotten stuck in a weed whacker.

Diego didn’t have the foresight to wonder as to how there could be multiple copies of the same book in a single timeline. In fact, he didn’t even consider it; he merely took a look at its wear, and at the scribblings covering the pages, and stopped thinking there.

He tapped the address stamped into the cover page with a gloved finger, throwing a wild guess into the air.

And, like the physical objects Diego throws, his hunch hits perfectly.

Luther and Diego arrive at the Argyle Public Library late in the afternoon, and wince at the size of the place. 

“Let’s split up,” says Luther, taking in the stories of books above them.

 _“Wow,_ good thinking,” snarks Diego, who’s pissed that he didn’t get to suggest it first.

They do, sweeping clockwise and counterclockwise, respectively, spiraling up to the fourth and highest floor.

They meet there, empty-handed, among the most obscure stacks where only desperate university students and eclectic hobbyists frequent, and Luther’s already turning to backtrack, and check again.

The light scrapes over Luther’s twisted shoulders, and Diego grimaces at the sight of them, recalling the harsh words they’d exchanged throughout the day.

“You wanna know why I left the Academy?”

“Yeah.” Luther stops, turns back to speak to him. “You couldn’t handle me being Number One.”

Diego bristles. He needs to deflect, to draw something out to redirect the conversation. 

“No,” Diego, who has no concept of what teenagers do at the age of seventeen, replies: “Because it’s what you _do,_ when you’re seventeen. You move out, become your own person. Grow up.”

Luther takes in Diego’s harness and ragged black sweater, and sighs. “Yeah, you’re a real grown-up.”

“At least I make my own decisions,” Diego leans against the railing. “You’ve never held down a job. Paid bills.”

Then, it occurs to him: “You ever been with a girl before?”

Luther’s face turns pink.

Diego snorts. 

“You want to blame me, blame _us,_ for leaving? Okay. You can do that. But you have to ask yourself, why’d _you_ stay?”

“I stayed because the world needed me.”

“You _stayed_ because you couldn’t let go of how things used to be. The Academy, Dad, Allison... But Dad’s dead now. Mom too. We’re orphans again, and things’ll never go back to the way they used to be.”

“Not all of them will,” Luther says quietly. “But some of them can stay.”

Diego shakes his head. 

The elevator dings, and a group of students burst into chittering laughter.

Diego perks his head up, and…

“Found him.”

It’s Five, smears of permanent marker on his fingers, huddled in an obscure corner of the library in a puddle of spilled vodka, drunkenly fondling a mannequin. Scattered around him is the detritus of his work: dried-out pens and markers, a notebook filled to the brim, equations scratched into the concrete wall of the building itself.

Five, unbeknownst to his brothers, had spent several days on a fool’s errand that had quite literally blown up in his face, courtesy of Klaus’s admission to the assassins of what he’d been searching Meritech for.

In response to the arson of the Meritech Laboratories building, Five decided upon the fair and even response of getting absolutely shitfaced, and stumbling back to the closest thing to a home he’d had in the apocalypse.

It had given him no comfort, but now, lolling, drunk as a skunk in Luther’s arms as he is carried to Diego’s hiding hole, he is drifting in drunken bliss, feeling his knobbly knees knock together.

“You know what’s funny?” he asks, staring at his smooth, mostly-unscarred hands, free of liver spots or the wear of age. “I’m going through puberty. Twice!”

“Disgusting,” replies Diego half-heartedly.

“Yeah… yeah...” Five trails off. “What do you guys even want?”

“Two intruders attacked the Academy last night,” Luther replies.

“Looking for _you,”_ adds Diego.

“Hazel and Cha-Cha,” Five hisses, pawing clumsily at Delores’s back.

“Who?”

“I hate codenames,” grumbles Luther.

“Oh, only the best of the best. Except for me, of course. You know, Delores hates it when I drink. Says it makes me surly. I’m not surly, am I--”

 _“Hey._ We need to know what those psychos want.” Diego whips around, pointing as menacingly as he is able. Five flops forward, and taps the end of his nose to the tip of Diego’s finger, cackling like a hyena. Diego sighs, and softens his tone. “We just want to protect you.”

Five finds that prospect absolutely hilarious. Protect _him?_ Does he have any idea how many people Five’s killed? God’s sake, he’s the four horsemen, and the apocalypse is nigh--

Five’s train of thought, which he’s about fifty-five percent sure he’s been rambling aloud, is interrupted by the overwhelming urge to vomit.

He has enough dignity to manage to aim just over Luther’s elbow, and spray it across the ground. Unfortunately, it requires him to shift his legs, sending the hip flask he’d kept concealed up until this very moment clattering down the leg of his shorts, and to the pavement.

“Oh shit, can you get that?”

“Sure,” replies Diego, snatching it and sending it clanging into a dumpster.

“Thank you,” says Luther.

Finally, they make it back to Diego’s basement abode, beneath the dingy boxing gym he mops floors for in exchange for free use of the boiler room. 

Which, he supposes, is kind of the point, given what Diego spends his nights doing.

Diego sets Five’s mannequin wife down on a chair, and peers at Five, utterly conked out.

“Well, he’ll sober up eventually,” sighs Luther, settling in to wait with him. 

“We can’t wait that long,” Diego says, pacing like a caged tiger. “We need to figure out his connection to these lunatics now, before someone else dies.”

Footsteps. Scraping down the hall. The door, opening.

Immediately, Luther steps in front of Five, and Diego draws out a knife, ready to--

“You throw another one of those things at me, I’m pressing charges.”

“Oh, hi Al.”

Al, Diego’s informal landlord and the very picture of a stereotypical Italian-American, shuffles in. “I’m not your secretary, alright? Some lady called for you. Says she needs your help?”

“What lady?”

“I dunno. Some detective?”

Diego’s heart drops. “Patch?”

“Sure.”

She needs his help. He _knew_ she’d need his help. A rush of vindication floods through him.

“Here,” Sal produces a crumpled note, “She needs you to meet her at this motel on Calhoun.”

“When’d she call?”

“It’s been about half an hour,” Sal begins shuffling out, tossing his last words halfheartedly over his shoulder. “Says she found your brother.”

“Brother?” Luther blinks, staring at Five.

“Well,” Diego says, folding the note between his fingers. “That didn’t…”

It hits the both of them at once: “Klaus.”

* * *

Luther stays behind to mind Five, which suits Diego just fine. He doesn't need any dead weight. The fact is that he does his best work on his own, anyway. He isn’t dependent on a group, not like One is.

He pulls up to the Luna Motor Motel in record time, charging into the lobby like a bull and skidding on the slick linoleum.

Eudora’s there, leaning against the far wall, tapping at her watch with a phone receiver balanced between her head and her shoulder.

She sighs upon seeing him, and the harsh blue fluorescents overhead flicker weakly. 

“How long’ve you been here?”

“About an hour.”

Diego glances at the front desk. “Anyone here?”

“Yeah. Been in the toilet about as long as I’ve been waiting for you. He wasn’t a great help when he was here though.”

“Did you get anything from him?”

“No. But get this,” She digs into her jacket, producing a matchbook, which she tosses to Diego. “Meritech burned down today. Same two masked guys. And parked outside, this… van?”

“I know it.”

_Huh. Guess we just missed each other._

“Right, well, this was in the windshield, with a message.”

“What’d it say?”

“Essentially, to meet here.”

“So they’re somewhere in the motel.”

“It’s what I’ve gathered.”

“Great. So let’s go looking.”

He’s half out the door, when Eudora’s call stops him. Diego peers over his shoulder, annoyed.

Eudora points to the payphone.

“Who’re you calling?”

“Precinct. Beeman.”

Diego rolls his eyes instinctively. _“More_ bureaucracy?”

“Diego.”

“Come on, Eudora. We’re right here. _He’s_ right here.”

“Yes,” she replies tepidly, “We are. And now I need a warrant before we head up there. These guys have shot up a store, tortured a man to death, and they attacked your house, on top of this arson case. And they wanted your brother to come here. Don’t you think this is a trap?”

Anger begins pulsing in his chest like a red star.

“What, you think I can’t handle it?”

Eudora grimaces. “That’s not at all what I’m saying.”

“Well, then why’d you even _bring_ me here, if not to go up there and take care of--”

“I brought you here because this is about _your_ brother. Because I knew you’d want to help.”

Diego draws all his emotions into himself, for just a moment.

“Which room.”

“Second floor, I think?”

_Great._

Diego tears out of the lobby.

Eudora’s crying out after him, but he ignores her, charging down the hall and stopping at every dirt-streaked window, peering through the gaps in the opaque curtains. 

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing, _then:_ A consistent _thunking,_ like knuckles rapping on wood, behind the door of Room 225, just after he passes it. 

_Here we go,_ he thinks, drawing back his leg and kicking in the door.

Behind him, he hears Eudora roaring at him to stop, but he smirks.

He’s right. Of _course_ he’s right.

Klaus is here, right in front of the door, sweaty and bloodied, bound and gagged to a chair with duct tape, grunting in relief at the sight of him. He’d been smashing his head into the nearby table. He’d _seen_ Diego, and known what to do to gain his attention. Diego runs a hand through Klaus’s hair affectionately, pleased with his instincts.

 _See,_ he thinks with vindictive, almost childish glee, rushing to cut him loose. Hands and feet first, then mouth. _See, I told you, acting fast gets results._

Eudora’s sensible shoes clatter in the hallway, just behind him. 

Diego turns, a crowish smile on his face, ready to preen as Eudora skids around the corner.

“Didn’t I _say_ we should just skip the--”

Her hand’s on his shoulder, wrenching him down, knocking Klaus’s chair to the side, the two of them barreled into the cheap greenish carpet between the bed and the wall, his brother’s shabby fur-rimmed coat flopping down on top of them.

He’s close enough to Klaus to brush noses with him, staring at the wide strip of tape still over his mouth.

“What the hell?”

A deafening burst of sound.

A white flash, from the bathroom in the corner. 

And Eudora, falling backwards.

Diego stares.

Beside him, Klaus bolts, worming his way to the wall, tearing down the loose grate to the air conditioning duct, and burrowing through it furiously, shoving the cumbersome briefcase stashed there out of the way as he scurries. He’s been struck dumb with terror, only has one thought, and that thought is: _fuck everything, I’m out of here._

Diego doesn’t even register him leaving; he’s too busy leaping over the bed, diving past a line of bullets that tear into the cheap upholstery, reaching for the knives secured to his harness.

By the time he’s sent them curving after the pair, they’ve already sprinted through the door, leaping over Eudora’s sputtering body, kicking her gun down the hall in their haste to flee.

He’s left alone.

And then, he hears the tinny, bubbling wheeze.

Diego turns, drops to his knees, his knives clinging to the floor as he reaches to take her into his arms.

There’s a bloom of blood soaking the front of her bright blue shirt. She’s been shot in the chest, but her eyes are open, flicking urgently. She draws in a sharp, wet breath.

She’s hurt. She’s hurt so _bad._

A wave of emotion hits Diego all at once, and, not knowing how to let it wash over him, he chokes on it, tightening his hand into a fist and pounding into the floor furiously as his eyes blur over with tears.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Why did you follow me, why..._

Sirens are wailing closer. She’d called for backup, and here they are.

And he can’t be here.

“I have to go,” he realizes. “I can’t be here. They’ll… _I have to go._ I’m sorry.”

Eudora blinks at him, eyes narrow and livid.

Diego draws up, snatching his knives into his hands, and sprints out into the night.

She watches him go, clinging to life furiously.

  
  


* * *

Klaus is sprinting, barefoot, one arm through his coat, the other clutching the briefcase, as he leaps onto the first bus he sees.

He doesn’t register at all that there’d been a death, that he'd abandoned his brother to two people who'd spent the better part of a day torturing him; only that he is safe enough for now. He is safe, and that is what matters most.

Settled, he begins toying with the briefcase, praying to any and all deities that may or may not exist that it contains money, so he might be able to head downtown and get himself some medicine to plunge him back into that state of blissful numbness.

_See, Ben, this is why we don’t go sober._

Klaus tugs on the combination lock, tapping at the latch and--

The briefcase flashes, the chronometer flicking on, a spike of bright blue spacetime blinding him.

The universe opens its maw wide, swallows Klaus whole, and spits him into the middle of war, where he will remain for months to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after fucking forever, we finally get to one of the Big Divergences: It is explicitly Diego's fault that Eudora gets shot, and she lives.


	4. the mask you wear

At roughly half past nine in the morning, Klaus flashes back to the exact seat he’d left behind.

His hair is shorter, his face is less skull-like, and his skin is no longer deathly pale, but tanned and tattooed. He is wearing a set of fatigues that stink of sweat and gunpowder and jungle mud, with hands wet with blood that is not his own, that is in the process of crusting on his knuckles. He has been gone for a total of ten hours, and in that span of time, he has aged ten months. He still looks like death, but a far different sort of death than he’d resembled before he’d gone; this death is one you can’t help but stare at.

He sits, hollow and empty as the ghosts who have yet to recognize his presence, and the bus circles its citylong route twice, then three times, before he finally remembers his legs.

He steps out, and the chill of a Midwestern springtime claws at him savagely enough to stir him from his stupor. The sudden shift in climates rattles him down to his bones.

Klaus is not consistently spiritual, but he is very superstitious. He’d gone through a phase, when he was nine, where he would habitually bury valuable objects in the courtyard and the rooftop garden. Silver dollars, gems he’d pried out of encrusted objects in Dad’s cabinets, clumps of hair stolen from Allison’s brush, the damaged blades of Diego’s knives. Anything that might hold some secret power that he might access, that might guard him from the ills of the universe. He isn’t totally sure, if it worked or not, but he’d rather not regret it. His life has been enough of a bitch as it is, and the thought that some odd ritual of his might’ve spared him some small misfortune is comforting.

So when he stares down at the evil object in his arms, he decides there’s only one thing that’s to be done with it.

Klaus takes the briefcase by the handle, and shatters it against the curb, bearing it down again, and again, and  _ again  _ until the body of the case flies away from the handle, bouncing across the brick walkway. It bursts into flame, revealing its evilness, and he flings the handle into the road, spits into his hands and begins rubbing his palm together. He only succeeds in wetting the half-dried blood.

Klaus drops to the ground, needs something steady beneath him, for what’s about to happen next; he has been here before, and he knows what it means. He’s listening to the dog tags around his neck jingle terribly, and suddenly, all the emotion comes roiling out of him like a vengeful storm.

He’s lying there, in the sunlight, in Ben’s shadow-that-isn’t-a-shadow, for a while.

Then, he hears the orders: his father’s or his commanding officer’s or One’s, he can’t tell, their voices are all molding together like the ghosts’ do, into an awful chorus commanding that he  _ get up, get moving, get home.  _

He obeys. 

Time is such a funny thing, he’s learned. He’s spent an eternity lying on that street, but he’s home in a blink, in a bathtub smeared with blood-that-isn’t-his, blood that's _Dave's,_ without the slightest idea as to how he’d gotten there. Past and present are mottled together,  _ see? _ It’s the only way to explain the chop of the helicopter blades, the steady rattle of gunfire, or is that the radiator sputtering, or if he can’t tell, does it even  _ matter? _

Then he’s in his bedroom, bloodless, with the exception of the filmy spots still stick to his feet, and back in the familiar constricting embrace of an old favorite pair of leather pants, and his skin feels like it intends to scuttle off his back and back into the tub. He might let it.

Behind him enters Five, trailing sparks of space-time and weary from either the last traces of a hangover, the strain of having opened himself up emotionally to Luther of all people, or likely both.

He blinks, peering at the inside of Klaus’s room with a look of slight confusion; ah yes, that’s right, this had been Vanya’s room the last time he’d been here. But, well, little Vanny hadn’t needed it when she’d gone off to normal school, now did she? And Klaus was a growing boy in need of his space, and an angry teenager in need of something to destroy, so tearing down the wall they shared was a natural solution.

But then he glances back, at the bathtub and the smears Klaus had left behind.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, it was just a long night.” He can’t hide the bone-deep tiredness, not in his posture, not in his voice.

Five examines him, and gets it immediately. “More than one, from the looks of it. Dog tags?” 

“Belonged to a friend.”

“That new tattoo?”

Klaus finishes tugging a shirt over his head. “You know, I don’t remember even getting it.”

“You did it, didn’t you?”

Klaus shrugs, dropping down to his bed, and Five’s inch of patience runs out. He recognizes the symptoms: the jet lag, full body itch, the headache that makes it feel like someone’s shoved a box of cotton up into your nose and through your brain.

“You gonna  _ tell  _ me about it?”

“Oh, sure, your pals? When they broke into the house and they couldn’t find you, they took me hostage instead.”

“You took their briefcase?”

“Yeah. I thought there was money in it, that I could pawn it, whatever. Then I opened it.”

Big oops there.

“And the next thing you knew, you were where?  _ When?” _ Five’s pacing, vicious little thing. 

“Does it matter? I was gone, like, a year?”

“A year?”

“Yeah, man, I’m ten months older now. Does that make me, like, the alpha sibling?”

“This isn’t a joke, Klaus. Do you have  _ any  _ idea what they’ll do to get that briefcase back? Where is it now?”

“Gone. Destroyed it.” He mimes the implosion of a mushroom cloud.

Five explodes.  _ “What were you thinking? _ I could’ve used that to start over!”

That’s enough, decides Klaus, padding off out of the room. Ben’s constantly up his ass. The last thing he needs is Five crawling up there too. He leaves his older-younger brother to scribble madly at whatever inane plan he’s up to next.

Klaus passes by Pogo, digging into Grace’s chest cavity with a blowtorch, which,  _ ouch. _ Then, he stops, peering at the shattered chandelier, the smears of dust, the bullet holes littering the foyer, wondering what he’d missed.

_ "You _ look like shit.”

It’s Diego, dragging the good ol’ Knife Box, back on whatever bullshit he’s been up to lately. He’s practically vibrating with anger, but Klaus doesn’t particularly care. He sees a ride, and knowing that one of the very few soft spots his brother has is reserved for him, he takes advantage.

It takes a minute for Klaus to scurry back from his search for his coat and God-knows-what-else, and Diego takes that time to call the station.

His call is taken immediately, and Beeman’s screaming in his ear, so loud that the phone speaker fuzzes out and Diego can only catch a fraction of what he’s saying.

But it’s enough.

Eudora’s alive. She’s  _ alive, _ in critical condition at Huxley General, and she’s been in surgery for hours.

“You don’t understand,” Diego’s saying, trying to get a single fucking word in, but good ol’ stick-up-the-ass Beeman just won’t let him. “You  _ don’t understand, _ I didn’t hurt her. Why are you yelling at me? I was there  _ helping  _ her. Those two psychos who shot her are out there, on the loose, and  _ they’re  _ the ones who hurt her, not me.”

There's silence on the other line.

Then:  “You know, personally, I don't see a difference."

"You're insane."

"She wouldn’t have been there at all if it hadn’t been for you--”

Diego hangs up.

He punches the wall until his knuckles split, making the paintings nearby rattle warningly.

Klaus naturally chooses that very moment to come slinking in from the parlor, cutting Diego’s outburst short.

_ That’s fine,  _ he tells himself, flexing his damaged fingers.  _ I’m saving it for them. I’m coming for them, and when I find them, they’ll be sorry they were ever born. I'll find them, and I'll kill them, and that'll make it right. _

Klaus isn’t totally sure what he’s looking for, when they start driving, but he finds it pretty quickly.

He’s halfway to a buzz, nursing a bottle of vodka he’d snatched from the liquor cabinet on his way out the door, and Diego’s filling the silence that hangs between them with awkward small talk, when he sees it: a veterans’ bar, just the kind of place he needs right now. 

The car hasn’t even stopped rolling, when Klaus leaps out and heads straight inside, leaving Diego staring after him, utterly baffled. 

The bar itself is perfectly mediocre, by Klaus’s standards, which are quite robust having been built up over an extensive tour of practically every watering hole in the city. The booze is fine, the decor is dull and the denizens are all geriatric, but he doesn’t mind at all, when he sees himself in one of the frames on the wall. 

_ It’s so odd, _ he thinks, reaching up to touch the glass. It really  _ is  _ distracting, looking at photographs of yourself. He supposes that factoid about how looking into a mirror fucks with your self-image has some truth to it after all. Or maybe it’s the way the film developed; everything’s yellowish and oddly-exposed,  _ wow, it makes Dave look like-- _

Oh. Yeah, he remembers the day this was taken now. He remembers the sticky heat clinging to his back, the guy from Fort Worth, same as Dave, who’d been holding the camera. He remembers how afterwards, he’d looked to Dave and laughed at him when he’d explained the city-eater worms from that science fiction novel he’d been rereading for the billionth time. He--

Is being manhandled. By a geezer. 

Oh that’s _ rich. _

He opens his mouth, and then Diego’s appearing beside him, to deescalate the situation.

Naturally, it goes belly-up, and they end up beating the shit out of a barful of retirees. 

It’s  _ great. _ It’s so great that they’re laughing about it ten blocks away outside Griddy’s, like they're nothing more than a pair of vicious teenagers, cackling about their latest prank.

Ben, predictably, is less enthused, so Klaus decides to take a bit of a break from him, digging into one of the pockets in his patchy coat until he finds one of the baggies of little helpers that Hazel and Cha-Cha hadn’t discovered.

Because the universe is uniquely cruel, it’s immediately smacked out of his hands by Diego, who takes the opportunity to discuss his abs in depth, a conversation topic that makes Ben decide to phase out of the car and take a lap around it, to enjoy the absolute tranquility of a bustling city street in the middle of the morning.

“That shit you do, man. It’s just  _ weakness.”  _ Diego’s saying, when Ben gets back, parroting one of Klaus’s personal favorites of Dad’s sayings. 

“Oh, but weakness is so good--”

Diego, so stubborn in his refusal to hide his own pain, has little patience for Klaus’s attempts to do just that. “What’s going  _ on  _ with you? Don’t tell me everything’s alright because I saw you in there, and you were  _ crying  _ like a  _ baby.” _

“Well, because I lost someone. The only person I’ve ever truly loved more than myself.”

Behind him, Ben recoils.

Diego chews on this for a long moment. He may well be about to lose someone.

“When you lose someone, at least you can see them whenever you want,” he begins, then sours when he sees Klaus pop a pill, concluding bitterly: “Or  _ not.” _

The argument that’s bound to start is stopped dead in its tracks, when a familiar shape passes through the sights of the rearview mirror. Both of them recognize the immense shoulders, the rounded face, the navy suit: It’s Hazel.

Klaus slides down in his seat, his coat rumpling up behind him.

The blood churns in Diego’s ears, as he watches the hitman climb into his dusty blue beater car and pull off into traffic. They trail him, unsubtly, and park, unsubtly, outside a notably shittier motel, behind the most unsubtle ice cream truck Klaus has ever seen.

Klaus watches Diego check each and every one of his knives, and rolls his eyes.

“Right, like killing them will solve things.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

Diego, for lack of any concrete plan, opts to wing it, leaping out of the door, throwing over his shoulder a firm suggestion that Klaus stay put, which, of course, he ignores, immediately trailing him up to the second floor.

“Go back to the car,” Diego hisses. “I have a plan. You stay in the car. I’m gonna go in, and handle it, and if I’m not back in two minutes, then I’m probably dead. That’s where you come in, see? You go get help.”

Klaus processes it carefully.

“Well,” he concludes, “I think your plan is stupid.”

Diego groans, and begins frogmarching Klaus back to the car.

Which has its tires slashed, hissing out air.

“What the hell?” Diego snarls. 

“Oh, now who did  _ that?” _

Their answer comes in the form of a high, tinny screeching from the end of the parking lot. It’s that damn blue beater car, burning rubber out of the lot, carrying Diego’s masked marks with it. 

Diego snatches a knife from his belt, and sends it flying after them, purely on impulse. The knife lodges in the hood, and does absolutely nothing to stop their movements.

Klaus stares after them, and then asks, flatly: “You think you got ‘em?”

“Shut up.” Diego digs out his old toolkit, and begins sifting through its contents, searching for… ah,  _ there  _ it is: a homing device.

“It’s one of the ones Dad made, the ones with the trackers in them.”

“Oh,” muses Klaus, “That was… smart.”

“You sound  _ so  _ shocked.”

“I am. Truly.”

“Doesn’t matter much though,” Diego peers at the device in his hands, already pinging urgently. “We have nothing to follow them with. God, my  _ car.” _

Klaus watches Diego kick at his tires furiously, leaning against the ice cream truck.

Then, he pauses. 

“Hey,” Klaus says. “I have an idea. You’re gonna love it.”

* * *

Five awakens to a heavy throbbing on the inside of his head, as though someone has taken it for a drum. He awakens to a bitter taste in his mouth, to the ghost of a nightmare slithering out of sight.

He takes a minute, staring after it.

It’d been about the Commission, he’s sure. About the shadow that’d been waiting for him out at the end of life, ready to swallow him whole with a red, red mouth.

But then he’s distracted; Luther is looming over him like a gargoyle, staring at him contemplatively, and he’s one day closer to Armageddon.

So, Five peels himself off of Diego’s sagging mattress, and sees fit to tell Luther about the end.

Luther, to his credit, has taken it seriously, more than anyone else has thus far. Even the admission that Five had found their corpses, splayed out among the rubble, only puts a shine in his brother’s eye.

_ Of course it did,  _ Five thinks, more than a little bit bitter;  _ Luther wants it all to mean something. To him, the news that the family had died side by side, trying to save the world, is proof that things might come together again.  _

It takes a full day for them to have this conversation. 

First, in Diego’s basement lair, when Luther accepts the end of the world as easily as though he might accept an unpleasant weather forecast. This is unsurprising to Five; each and every one of them had been trained from birth to see the apocalypse looming on the horizon like a coming storm cloud. 

What is surprising to him is how quickly he takes to the concept of the Temps Commission. Learning that the world is secretly controlled by a cadre of time-traveling assassins isn’t exactly the easiest pill to swallow-- God knows Five had tried to cough it up many times-- but he simply nods his head and lets it settle in. Which, Five notes begrudgingly, is mildly impressive.

Then in Five’s bedroom, while he’s scratching away at the variables on his walls, trying to determine which man of a list he’s compiled is the world-killer, in which he and Luther nearly come to blows over the ethics of killing. In which Five feels the sting of Luther’s disapproval strike him far deeper than he’d expected.

And now, thirty miles outside the city, well into farm country, they’re pulled over on the side of the road, waiting for Hazel and Cha-Cha to arrive for the trade-off he’s faking, he’s still thinking about it.

Five glances over at Luther, hunched in the passenger’s seat of their father’s car, his oversized shoulders brushing the underside of the roof. 

_ It’s important, _ he thinks, _ that you understand. _

“You know, I never enjoyed it.”

“What?”

“The killing.” Five shifts in his seat, has to keep his eyes on the sloping gray line of the road, “I mean, I was good at my work, and I took pride in it. But it never gave me pleasure.”

He isn’t sure, to be honest, whether the roar in his blood is from the act of killing itself, or from the knowledge that having done so has accomplished something. He isn’t sure if he wants to know. 

The blood had run  through his fingertips like sand through an hourglass.  He stares down at his hands, too thin, too untouched by age, and he can almost see it, can almost feel it sticking the insides of his fingers together and clinging to the undersides of his nails.

“I think it’s all those years alone,” he says, mostly to himself, “Solitude can do funny things to the mind.”

Luther runs a gloved finger along the steering wheel. “I only spent four years on the moon, but that was  _ more  _ than enough. It’s being alone that breaks you.” 

That, Five supposes, is why he’s so comfortable talking about this to Luther. He doesn’t have to explain himself nearly as much. 

“Think this’ll work?” Luther wonders, tugging at the briefcase they’re using as a proxy. 

It’d better. He’s gambling a lot on this. But Five has faith; the Commission wouldn’t let the two of them leave without their briefcase, and being trapped in a world a few short days from the end of all things is sure to be a strong motivator.

“They’re desperate,” Five replies.

“Alright, well I should hang onto this. In case they make a move on you.”

“Fine. But be careful.” Five sighs, peering over at Luther.

Every now and again, Five feels his age sharply, and this seems to be one of those moments. 

Or rather, he feels his lack of age, when he hears his voice reedily crackle, and grimaces at the sound.

He hates his body. He misses the old creaking of his bones and the gnarled fingers and the scars he’d earned over the decades. In the apocalypse, the years lasted for moments, blinking by so quickly, with only his body to mark the passage of time by. Those old wounds had been his, and he’d earned them all, and they’d been taken from him. 

“You’re still so young. Got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t waste it on anything reckless.”

Luther nods, thinking:  _ God, this is so weird. _

And then, there’s movement: the hitmen are arriving, cresting slowly over the hill, and they’re in business. 

The details of the deal aren’t known to Luther, but he doesn’t need to know. He stays put, watching Five negotiate, ready to move. Strangely, he feels the most at ease in the middle of a standoff. 

Naturally, when it seems like things are coming to terms, and they might actually get out of this mess with a success, Klaus and Diego come roaring over the hillside, and that is that.

Bullets fly, Luther throws up his arms to take them for Five, and the world goes still and distorted and green-tinted, like they’re suspended in a mold of Jell-O.

Or rather, like everyone  _ but  _ Five is suspended in a mold of Jell-O.

He can feel the Handler’s presence long before she announces herself, in the way the hair on the back of his neck stands on end.

Five keeps his face carefully blank as he turns to greet her. As is the case with tigers and other ambush predators, it will not do to keep your back to her.

Five hates the Handler, deeply, viscerally, but he does reflect her flair for the dramatic: like the devil she is, she’s chosen to meet him at a crossroads. 

She looks exactly the same as he’d last seen her. A sweep of silver hair, heavy dark eyes, a set of bright red heels that he knows for a fact she matches her nail varnish and lipstick to. At least the outfit isn’t too ridiculous; he’s unfortunately become quite familiar with her fashion habits, and finds it all very distasteful.

“You look great,” she says, eyes raking down his body, “All things considered.”

_ Great. So it’s still like that. _

“Good to see you again,” he replies flatly.

“Feels like we met just yesterday. Course, you were a bit older then. Congrats on the age regression, by the way, it really did throw us all off the scent for a while.”

“Wish I could take credit for it, but it was a mistake. Miscalculated the time dilation projections, and, well, here I am.”

“You realize your efforts are futile?”

_ No, not at all. _

“So you must want something else, right?” She unfolds her arms, like a spider would to a fly.

“I  _ want  _ you to  _ stop it.” _

She smiles, and something about it sends a chill racing down Five’s spine. It’s like she has too many teeth. “Oh, you know that’s next to impossible, even for me. What’s meant to be is meant to be.”

Insanity. Absolute insanity.  _ You literally have all the time in the world; you can do anything. Of course you can. _

“I don’t believe that.”

The sickly greenish light is making his stomach churn, and as the Handler clicks towards him, she warps and flickers like a funhouse mirror. “This fantasy you’ve been nurturing, about summoning your family to stop the apocalypse is just that: fantasy.”

He rolls his eyes.

She’s unconvinced. “We’re all quite impressed with your initiative; it’s quite something, which is why we want to offer you a new position back at the Commission. In  _ management.” _

She says it like she’s expecting him to drop to his knees and beg for her to take him back.

As if.

“Yeah, remember how things went last time I worked for you?”

“Really! It’ll be different this time. You’d be working out of the home office. Best health and pension, an end to this ceaseless travel.”

_ You really have no idea, do you? _

“I  _ do not  _ care.”

Her hand slides onto his face, bringing with it memories of clawing hands sliding across his shoulders, creeping up his thighs. He resists the uncivilized urge to lean over and bite it. “And your… current state? We have the technology to reverse the process. You  _ can’t  _ be happy like this.”

Happy’s not possible for him. He’s taken that ugly fact deep into himself and accepted it long ago.

“I’m not  _ looking  _ for happy.”

But damn him, there’s a flash of a second where he  _ considers  _ it.

“We can make you  _ yourself  _ again.”

Then it occurs to him: Suppose he does come along. Suppose he’s taken back to Main Headquarters, suppose he has all the resources of the Commission laid open at his fingertips. Suppose he might discern the cause of the apocalypse there.

_ Maybe it’s better,  _ he thinks then,  _ to play along, just for a moment. _

“What about my family?”

“What about them?”

“I want them to survive.”

She peers, carefully, at each of his brothers, and asks, quite deliberately,  _ “All _ of them?”

“Yes, _all_ of them.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

Five reads between the lines: _ I’m definitely not going to save a single one of them. _

She extends a hand, and he takes it.

And then, they're gone.

* * *

A change has come over Vanya.

It has come over her, slowly, the way the sun might roll over the side of a mountain.

First, the paling of the sky from blue to gray, as Vanya has trouble sleeping, tossing and turning in sweat-stained sheets, staring at the cracks in her ceiling, then the soft gray shapes cast on the wall by the light from her window. Her thoughts are buzzing like flies around and around her head-- she cannot predict their movements; she can only glimpse their quick, blurring shapes, in the form of the dreams that jolt her awake, the sharp, vicious dreams of being caught in the razor-toothed belly of a monster. 

Then, the hush of the orchestra of night insects, fully aware that their concert has concluded for the time being, as Vanya kicks all her blankets to the foot of her bed, worms her way out of her shirt and pants and lies in only her underwear, exposed to the air, in the hopes that she might just be overheating all of a sudden, that it might just be her apartment’s faulty heating system acting up on her.

Then, the chorus of morning birds, who know in that supernatural way that birds know before all other creatures know that the day has broken and they only have yet to see it; Vanya lays awake for hours, breathing sharply, then slowly, with a palm pressed to her chest, watching the dawn crawl slowly across the cracks in her ceiling.

Then, the flash of lavender and orange and pink and gold spilling across the clouds, as she sits up, all at once, awake and aware that she’d slept only a few short hours, yet is somehow wired and ready to move.

The change has come over her slowly, but it has come. It is here, and she can see that first flash of light over the peak.

Vanya crawls out of bed, and into the shower, and yelps at the way the cold water stabbed into her skin like a thousand needles of ice. She’s so excited, then, to pull her usual long sleeves over herself, but spends an hour digging furiously through her drawers and trying on shirt after shirt after shirt, searching for the finest, softest materials that won’t make her skin crawl.

In the end, she settles for something lighter, that fits her like a glove in the way that most of her sweaters never would have. It’s something she’d bought years ago, something that’d sat in the bottom of her drawer for years and years, that she’d glanced at now and again, trying to muster the courage to wear in public.

She chooses it now, and picks an enormous striped scarf to go with it. Vanya spends a minute digging furiously through her bathroom cabinets for the makeup she’d bought shortly after graduation and only used for job interviews, that’d become clotted and sticky from age. She listens to the voicemail machine sputter out one message after the other: Mrs. Kowalski wants to find her cat, Peter from the Icarus is asking about any ticket reservations she’ll want to make for the coming concert, the conductor from St. Pluvium is calling upon all the orchestra’s violinists to audition as the first chair’s understudy, as Helen Cho has been utterly unresponsive and they must prepare for the event that she is not here…

And she is out the door with a spring in her step, her hair half-up and swishing behind her as she steps into the sunlight. 

She has a  _ date  _ today. 

This morning, she is meeting Leonard for breakfast.

Leonard, who she already feels knows her better than anyone. Leonard, who’d carved her a special gift days ago,  _ her, _ of all people. Leonard, who’d stared gorgeous, famous,  _ special  _ Allison in the eye, and then looked to her and told her he preferred her anyway. Leonard, who’d treated the gash over her eye and let her sleep on his couch, and held her hand while she cried the night her siblings had turned her out of the house.

Leonard, who she is absolutely  _ sure  _ is the cause of this change.

She’d thought the cause of this new state she’s in over carefully: it isn’t a fever, it isn’t the heating, it isn’t her anxiety, because she’s so  _ happy…  _

But it has to be _something,_ and it’d started that morning she’d woken up tucked into his antique couch, a well-worn blanket curled over her legs. That morning he’d handed her a mug of tea and changed the bandage on her forehead and reassured her that she’d be fine for a few days without the medication that she’d so sillily misplaced somewhere in her skittish retreat from the mansion.

It  _ has  _ to be him, she concludes; things haven’t been this bright before he came along. Colors haven’t been this vibrant. That deep, ever-present chill in her fingers and toes hadn’t dissipated. She feels warmer. She feels livelier. She  _ feels. _

When she’s sitting with him at the table overlooking the window outside his choice coffeehouse, when his fingers lace through hers, when his shoulder nudges hers and he firmly urges her to chase after the audition she mentions shyly, she gets it. 

_ I’m in love, aren’t I?  _

She looks at him, her mouth popping open, so wrapped up in her realization that she doesn’t realize at all that she’s just poured salt into her coffee until he tells her, and she’s laughing harder than she has in years.  _ Yes, I am in love. _

“You should do it,” he’s saying, talking about the audition.

She’s just told him about Helen Cho, the prodigious first chair who isn’t responding to any of the conductor’s calls, who’s been absent at their last few rehearsals. They’ll need a person to serve as backup for first chair, should she be a no-show at the concert in the coming days, and Leonard is telling her that she is that very person.

She believes in him, because he believes in her.

But more than that, she can  _ feel  _ it, unfurling like a flower within her, this slow, warm sureness that yes, this might be  _ it, _ this might be her  _ moment.  _

This week has been the strangest in her life. Her father is dead, and her brother is back, and her sister is trying to be kind to her, and she has a boyfriend. 

Maybe, Vanya thinks naively, when she’d written  _ Extra Ordinary, _ the universe had heard her after all. It’d peered into the pages she’d written, and made note of her aspirational lies about her confidence and her assuredness. It had read between the lines, to the things unwritten, to Vanya’s most secret, urgent desires, and it had recognized her lies as a sort of spell she’d been trying to cast on herself.

Maybe it had understood, and, seeing that Vanya is ordinary and no magic would ever respond to her, the universe had seen fit to reach down into her and spur it on for her. 

Maybe it’d just taken a few years, for that change to settle in and switch on. Helen had told her just this week that her ten thousand hours would only get her so far, and she’d been mocking her, but it’d been  _ true, _ hadn’t it? Vanya’s technique is solid and carefully-whetted from years of practice, but she’d been lacking in feeling. And now she  _ has  _ it.

Maybe, things are going to be different for her. Maybe, things are going to be better.

_ No. No maybe,  _ Vanya thinks fiercely.  _ Things  _ are  _ going to be better. _

Vanya takes Leonard’s face in his hands, kissing him deeply before she hops onto the bus bound for her apartment, so she might snatch her violin in time to make the audition. _Things are going to be better,_ _and it is because of you._

That warm, certain feeling builds in her like a wave, and she rides its crest all the way to the Icarus, all the way to the smaller performance stage that the orchestra frequents for its practices.

Only when she is padding across the scratched wooden floor, staring out at a sea of empty seats do the clouds of doubt roll in. Her voice shudders in her throat, like it always does when she speaks, and she repeats her name three times to the conductor, who has not learned it even years into her tenure with the orchestra.

Her hands are shaking when she draws her bow across the strings and starts to play, and the first of her notes fall out of her in a tremble.

But then, as her fingers pluck at the strings, and she begins to sway with the sound, she feels that unease lift from her shoulders like a heavy load. She knows this song, knows exactly where to place her fingers and how to angle her bow. She knows it well enough to not need the sheet music at all.

And what’s more, she wants this.

She  _ wants  _ this, and she draws in a deep breath through her nose, raising her chin and closing her eyes, to reach down deep within herself to find that determination and coax it out again. She wants this, and this is her chance to have it.

And then, she hits her stride.

The notes flow from her smoothly, and in spite of herself she’s smiling, her heart skipping away like a schoolgirl. It feels like she’s caught on to a rope of lightning, and it’s filling her with a bright, vibrant sort of confidence that thrums in her.

Vanya finishes with a flourish, and opens her eyes.

The conductor is leaning forward in his seat, his hands clasped in front of his face.

She’s been listened to, and the realization is like reaching out and touching a livewire.

The bright current of energy that bolts through her carries her home, carries her through hours of careful practice where she hits not a single sour note, carries her through the hours of hair-pulling anxiety as she waits for the call to come in.

Naturally, it’s then, as the hour that she’s been told she’ll receive the result fast approaches, that there’s a knock at her door.

It’s Allison, swishing in confidently, the smooth blue silk of her coat flowing like water behind her. She comes bearing gifts.

“Bombolini,” she says, holding the bag up proudly, “From Petrollo’s Bakery? From when we were kids.” Allison forgets that Vanya had never been taken there, that treats from Petrollo’s were exclusively a post-mission reward, but she is trying, and Vanya is in an excellent mood, so she accepts it.

Then, she pauses.

Because this is Allison. She wants something.

“What’s this for?” she asks, interrupting Allison from her current intense scrutiny of the way Vanya has poorly blended blush into her cheeks.

Allison bites her lip. “You’re not gonna want to hear this.”

“Is this about last night? Because look, I--”

“No,” Allison lies easily, folding her hands carefully over her abdomen. 

It’s not about last night. Not entirely, anyway.

Allison, after sleeping through yet another flight back to California, had spent her morning hunched over newspaper archives at the library, looking up her sister’s beau, driven by a strange, crawling paranoia in the back of her mind that’d flared up since she’d realized she’d have to delay her plane trip back by at least another day.

She’d found next to nothing. An address, a throwaway article about a charity auction that Peabody had apparently participated in. Being both a Hargreeves, trained to assume the worst in everyone, and a major celebrity, divorced from reality at the best of times, she naturally assumed the worst, and decided upon the fair and balanced response of breaking into her sister’s boyfriend’s house to search for dirt in person. Which, to her abject disappointment, she did not find.

She tells Vanya this, worrying at the unlikeliness of it all, utterly oblivious to the boundaries she’d gone trapising over. Boundaries are new to her, you see; Allison spent nearly twenty-five years of her life stomping over them, and she is only just beginning to learn about concepts like asking for permission or basic consent. Needless to say, she still has quite a ways to go.

_ “Allison.  _ Why the hell would you do that?”

“Vanya there are records of everything at the library. I mean, look me up, and you can find miles of--”

“You’re one of the most famous people in the world.”

“Okay, bad example. But I think there ought to be some kind of record of him. All I could find was an article and his name in the phone book--”

“And what’s this about  _ going to his house?” _ Vanya interjects. 

_ “Listen, _ I’ve had my fair share of stalkers and creeps--”

“Really? And the creepy stalker in this situation  _ isn’t  _ you? Honestly, Allison, who the hell  _ does  _ that?”

Allison blinks. She doesn’t understand where all this  _ anger  _ is coming from;  _ honestly, Vanya’s acting like a petulant teenager. _

“Vanya, you need to understand that I’m making an  _ effort  _ to--”

“To  _ what? _ Do you really not trust me?”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Well, I mean, you’re moving awful fast with this man--”

“And? Why shouldn’t I? I like him, and he thinks I’m special.”

The scoff flies out of Allison before she can stop it. “Vanya, you’ve got to admit, it’s more than a  _ little  _ childish.”

_ “Childish?” _

Allison tilts her head, arms crossing. _ “I _ am just worried--”

“Yeah.  _ You.  _ This isn’t  _ about  _ you,” Vanya fumes. 

Then, it occurs to her:  _ You’re not being nice to me for my own sake, are you? _

“You know, if you want to mother someone so bad, why don’t you go back to your own daughter? That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

The words cut Allison like a knife.

“That’s not fair,” she says quietly.

“I need you to leave,” Vanya replies firmly, her fingers white-knuckle tight around her bow.

For once, Allison goes quietly, and Vanya presses her forehead to the dingy glass of her window, watching her hail a cab, ducking out of view when her head swivels to glance up at her.

When her sister’s ride back to the mansion has started down the street, the phone rings.

Vanya receives her answer, and she knows  _ exactly  _ who she’ll tell first.

The cab ride out to Leonard’s place, halfway between her apartment and the mansion, is long, but Vanya endures it, shoving bombolini into her mouth to satiate the sudden, urgent hunger that’s come over her.

She’s only just stepped up to his doorstep, just begun smearing the years-old tube of gloss over her lips, when Leonard opens his door. 

“The audition was amazing,” she says, pacing back and forth in circles, suddenly energetic and bright. Vanya tugs her scarf off, suddenly stifled by its heat against her neck. “I’ve never played without my medication before, so I was nervous, but…” She’s beaming. “But it was...”

It was like she was carried along, by some invisible force. Like suddenly, Vanya’s talent had burst out of her like a star, and for three-and-a-half minutes, she’d shone.

Leonard takes a step forward, “Like an out-of-body experience?”

“No, like… Like kind of the  _ opposite  _ of that.”

“How do you mean?” he asks, so hungry to hear her speak, and oh, he  _ gets  _ it. He gets  _ her. _

“It’s like…” Vanya draws her hands out, begins waving them excitably, “I felt everything more fully. More  _ deeply.” _

She whispers this next bit, to make sure he’ll lean in closer to her, which he does: “And I got it.” 

“What?”

“I got first chair!”

He catches her around the waist and pulls her in for a hug, exclaiming as he whirls her around his living room.

“I’m so happy for you,” he’s saying. “You’ve had to deal with so much, and you know, you deserve this!”

Then, he draws in close, whispering urgently: “This is your  _ time.” _

His hand on her shoulder is warm, so  _ warm, _ and Vanya’s eyes are burning; it feels like her body’s  _ singing _ , she’s so happy. “No one’s ever believed in me like this.” 

There’s a flood of heat, the likes of which she’s never felt quite as intensely as this before, and Vanya tilts her heads upwards to kiss him.

He lets her. 

Arousal is pooling low in her belly, for the first time in what feels like years, and Vanya’s determined to act upon it, to seize it before it flits away from her as it’s always done before. A change has come over her, and these things that have always been denied her are now within reach. She’s gained one, so she will gain them all.

So Vanya takes Leonard gently by the collar, walking them back into his couch, and crawling into his lap when he falls to the cushions. Vanya draws her shirt up over her head, and he follows her lead, allowing her to puppet his hands into place. She’s in  _ love, _ and she wants to show him.

* * *

The Main Headquarters of the Temps Commission-- recently rebranded from the Temps Aeternalis for reasons mostly focused on relieving its employees from the agony of remembering how to spell ‘Aeternalis’ on official documents-- are a series of attractive brick buildings that, to any passers-by (of which there are virtually none, given the Commission’s extensive security measures), ostensibly resemble those one might find on a university campus. Each and every one was built sometime in the Edwardian era, and each and every one of them, through some unnatural quirk of Commission science, is far larger on the inside than it is on the outside, and connected to all the others through a complex system of subterranean tunnels that it’d taken Five a month to learn to navigate when he’d come for orientation years ago.

Five emerges on the Handler’s arm from one such building, made up to appear as an observatory, and, peering at the vaguely overcast shade to the sky, he judges correctly that it is half past ten in the morning according to the Commission’s particular brand of time.

See, on the grounds of the home office, time moves at a different pace. Every day is exactly the same, and it is that way by design; at exactly five in the evening, time is rewound back to nine sharp, so the same exact day may be repeated in perpetuity. This is to ensure that the weather is always at a pleasant temperature, that the clouds always roll across the horizon at exactly the same pace, and never yield any rain, that the perfectly-manicured lawns remain at exactly the same height and the shrubbery never requires pruning. This is also to ensure that business hours last forever. 

Mercifully, they’ve crossed the threshold into the main administration building, and the Handler has unlooped his arm from hers, so she might pull her leather overcoat off. She’s rattling on about health benefits and the Commission’s stellar childcare policy-- good enough for her own daughter, yes, sure, how sweet-- and how  _ fortunate  _ he is, that he might become her successor.

The thought makes his blood chill.

He looks at her, and thinks, quite seriously, that he wants her dead.

“I’d like to discuss the logistics of my family’s safety at your earliest convenience,” he’s saying, intent on playing the part of true convert. “As well as this body replacement.”

“Slow down, Five. All in good time. In fact, now that you’ve agreed to work for us, you now have all the time in the world.”

She tours him leisurely through the facilities, passing by the briefcase room, the orientation hall, the armory, the tube room, and Five keeps his eyes wide open, absorbing everything, sketching a mental map in his head. 

He gets the sense that she's showing him off to everyone he passes, that he might look down and find that he's leashed to her, trotting like a show dog at her side. Five  bites the inside of his cheek, hard, to keep from turning tail and running, from whipping around and digging his teeth into her jugular and tearing.

_ Stay the course, stay the course, stay the course. _

They come to the floor he’s meant to stay on, the one meant for case managers.  The open-concept offices stretch off into infinity, each manager brushing shoulders with the next, constantly smashing into each other as they attempt to navigate the narrow channels between their desks. There’s a constant drone of noise; typewriters, phones, small talk, papers rustling, and there are enough people working here to dwarf any army. 

“Impressive, isn’t it?” she says, “To be a part of something so grand.”

Five might’ve agreed with her, had he not been told that very same thing by his father, over and over again when he’d been a boy. 

The uniform the case managers and corrections workers maintain, the strictly-gendered suits and skirts (with exceptions, of course, for the corrections workers) in varying shades of blue and teal all have the effect of making every employee bleed into the next, their faces blurring together so well that to an untrained eye, one might not even notice the blankness in their faces.

Five’s eyes, like it needs saying, aren’t untrained. 

The Commission, Five knows, chooses its staff carefully, plucking each and every employee up and whisking them away. Everyone here is lost in time, fractured and extracted from the lives they knew. That’s how the Commission recruits, by opening a door through space-time to lost souls in a moment of despair, reaching down and extending a hand, promising them salvation, promising them freedom from their current circumstances, in return for five years of service. Naturally, there are a lot of strings attached to that agreement, but no one ever thinks about it at the time. They take the hand, sign their name in the book, and are on to orientation. Each and every one of these people with flat, reflective, coin-like eyes, mindless but for the mundane tasks they’ve been assigned, had been like him once.

_ But none of them, _ Five thinks pompously,  _ are as special as me.  _

Not that his specialness is an advantage here. It'd been what made the Handler become so attached to him, what made her favor him over all the others ( Her favor, it must be said, always seemed to present itself in the bloodiest, grisliest of the assignments, and being special, Five of course excelled at them. He makes a pointed effort to keep his hands fisted in his pockets, to keep from looking down to see if the blood's still on them). 

Being in hell, it’s only natural that Five’s desk is squarely in front of that of Dot, who manages the apocalypse, who’d flagged his appearance in 2019 and set the dogs loose on his family. He can hear her breathing down his neck constantly, her pencil clicking against the desk as she scratches along, allowing the deaths of billions. He seriously contemplates whipping around, and shoving that pencil down her throat, but he swallows the urge.

His first assignment, the Hindenburg, is another punishment. See, Five’s done this very mission already; he’s going to be assigning it to himself, bloodying his own hands. It’s most certainly why the Handler had chosen to give it to him in the first place.

That, and to give him an easy win early on, to make him beholden to her, to make him  _ indebted  _ to her.

It’s clear, when the Handler’s sidling up to him in the tube room, and then again, digging her nails into his shoulders at his desk, and then  _ again, _ peering over the top of the bathroom stall he’d retreated to to read the file he’d lifted from Dot’s desk, exactly what she hopes he’ll be giving her. 

But, it’s a way up, so he’ll take it. He’ll let her think he might. When he promised himself he'd do anything to save the world, he had meant _anything._

So, he sits in her spacious office, which, he hates to admit, is actually tastefully designed, and eats the Commission’s cafeteria lunch. He sits in the heart of her web, and watches furiously as she continues to spin her sticky threads around him, fully aware that struggling will only make the process more agonizing.  Five isn’t sure which is worse, that she’s doing it at all, or that she’s smiling so brightly as she does it.

It doesn't matter. 

He sits, and smiles sourly at her, and wants her dead.

He endures her insipid tales about assassinating Hitler and the Archduke, carefully dances around the prospect of dessert, knowing damn well what she’s actually implying when she suggests he might enjoy something sweet, and pointedly brings her cigarette to her mouth. 

(But, hating himself, he can’t resist snatching a handful of the hard candies from the dish on her desk when she offers it; he’s spent most of his life on the verge of starvation, and hunger is a powerful teacher. Even if he hates this woman, he’ll take her food.)

She presents to him an expensive, custom-made suit designed for a body being cooked up in one of the Commission’s labs, and her spindly fingers start creeping down his shoulder again.

He opts to appeal to the Handler’s ego, before her claws can curl under his collar and she decides not to wait for his older body to finish incubation after all.

Five tugs away sharply, turning to the glass case full of memorabilia adorning her wall, asking if she might explain to him what she's keeping there.

She takes the bait, thank God.

And Five merely has to endure twenty minutes of exposition on her trophies.

The Handler sees herself as a collector, a fine connoisseur of items across time: a well-worn telescope that had once belonged to Sir Isaac Newton, M26 grenades from the Vietnam War, a little framed photograph of a dark-haired toddler that she stares at for a moment, then pointedly avoids discussing...

“You, of  _ course,” _ she says, tapping a red-tipped finger on his nose. He imagines, again, closing his teeth around it, twisting and biting until it's been torn clean off.

Then, she unlocks the glass case to draw out an unremarkable Walther pistol and cradle it against her breast. “And this? My personal favorite and the most noteworthy thing in my collection. The very thing Hitler used to kill himself.”

Five forces a smile onto his face. “Wow.”

“Right?”

She actually lets him hold it, lets him feel the perfect balance for himself, and it’s then that Five feels he might be secure enough in her favor to begin pushing.

“I have some suggestions. Things that might improve Commission protocol.”

“Shaking things up already? Do tell.”

Then, comes Dot, tapping at the door urgently, like a child in desperate need of the bathroom. She squeaks about a problem with her case, waving her folder urgently.

And that seems to be the end of that. 

Five’s sent on his way, but he’s able to note two crucial things before he leaves.

First, that the Handler’s left her case full of antique weapons unlocked. 

Second, that the look in Dot’s eye tells him that his intentions are no longer a secret. 

So much for his plans.

He tracks Dot to the tube room, once she leaves the Handler’s office, beats the tube commissioner unconscious with a stapler, and promptly intercepts the message bound for Hazel and Cha-Cha, swapping it out for a pair of orders designed to set them on each other. 

As soon as he’s sent the tubes rattling off through space-time, the room’s painted red by the flashing alarm, a monotone female voice crying for security to rush to the tube room.

“You’re a great disappointment to me,” coos the Handler from behind him, and he grimaces, turning to face her, knowing  _ exactly  _ who’d pulled the alarm.

He’s staring down the barrel of her Walther, sees her finger twitch on the trigger, and jumps.

To her office. To the fine case full of weapons left unattended. To the grenades. To the briefcase room, which he unleashes hell onto, determined to do as much damage as humanely possible.

Back to the tube room, where he finds her unloading the pistol against the machinery, bullets sparking off the copper and flitting wildly about the room, like strange fireflies. 

But she’s heard the whir of space flickering around him, and she calls out to him. “Is this really how you want the last lines in your report to read? Honestly, Five, this is such a  _ waste. _ You belong here, with  _ us.” _

_ With me, _ she means.

She’s wrong. She’s  _ wrong. _

Five, bristling with repulsion, can’t help but open his mouth, can’t help but let the most terrible of his fears bubble up and out of him. “I don’t belong  _ anywhere, _ thanks to you!”

He steps out into the aisle, needs to be in just the right place to do the most damage.

Needs to look her in the eye, when he does this.

“You owe me,” she hisses, the words heavy with the weight of all she intends to take from him.

Five twitches.

Oh, he owes a debt, alright. And he’s willing to give all of those things. Just not to her.

He doesn't just want her dead, he realizes. He wants her destroyed. He wants her gone from the earth, obliterated entirely, until she's nothing but ash.

“Hey,” he says coldly, tugging the pin from the grenade in his hands. “Catch.”

She doesn’t. Not that it would’ve mattered.

The blast of orange fire that engulfs the tube room tears half the wall away, and flames lick at Five’s heels, even halfway down the hall. He feels shrapnel sting in his side, but ignores it.

Among the debris, he sees the Walther, skidding across the floor, knocked along with files and tubes and various odds and ends by the percussive blast of the grenade.

As he makes a mad dash down the hall, he snatches it off the floor, tucking it into his waistband, and then he's stepping through a hole in time, the name of the man who kills the world in his pocket.

She's dead. She's _dead,_ and his blood is singing in his ears. 

This, he'll admit, may be the only time he's ever gained true pleasure from killing.

* * *

Vanya spends a second night in a row gaining very little sleep, albeit, for a very different, far more pleasurable reason. 

To be frank, she isn’t good at sex. She’s never been. Not that she’s had much practice, of course, being as unremarkable and unattractive as she is. She’s dated, but only twice, and though she’s slept with both her former boyfriend and her former girlfriend, the consensus she’d gained was that she was quite poor at it. What’s more, she’s hardly had a libido at all; it’s always been present enough, but murky and elusive, and usually out of reach, making Vanya spend many long nights fretting that something in her had broken somehow during puberty.

Now, it seems that whatever had fallen loose has clicked back into place at last, and she’s quite anxious to make up for lost time, so hungry to touch and be touched, to feel and be felt. 

It’s Leonard, who keeps pulling away, urging her that she needs her rest, that she needs to sleep, and eventually, she agrees, spending a few short hours dozing in his bed, before waking early, as tender and excitable as she’d been yesterday.

The sound of his voice lures her downstairs, and she walks in on him eagerly ordering a set of tickets to her forthcoming concert.

It surprises her a little, that he’d order six, but then he tells her that he’s taken the liberty of ordering them for each of her siblings.

She’s less enthused by the idea than she probably should be.

She still isn’t, when they’re passing through the basement door of the mansion, to invite her siblings in person.

“I just feel like…” Vanya plays with a loose loop of white yarn on the edge of her scarf, “Like, everytime I see them, I come away feeling like there’s less of me.”

Leonard sighs, taking her wrist in his hand. “Well, now you have me. The Sonny to your Cher. The peanut butter to your jelly.”

Vanya winces at his corniness, but oh, isn’t it  _ sweet? _

“Listen. Getting first chair is a huge accomplishment, and you did it all yourself. Inviting them is the right thing to do. They deserve to see you, and how talented you are.” 

Vanya pulls him up for a quick kiss, and then tugs him through the winding dim corridors of the house. Leonard stares around, bug-eyed, at the place, and she can’t blame him. She’d grown up utterly desensitized to the stuffed animals and the memorabilia lining the walls. This is all new to him, but he’s handling it so well.

The rumble of her siblings quarreling bounces off the walls, and it isn’t long at all before she finds them, gathered around the bar in the parlor, jabbering like a flock of crows over each other.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Vanya asks.

She knows, already. She knows, by the quick, shifting gazes they exchange. By the way they’re all huddled together, by the years and years of experience she has, because this is what they  _ always  _ do.

“It’s a family matter,” Allison says, a little uncertainly, and beside her, Luther blinks in confusion, glancing at her. 

_ I knew it,  _ Vanya thinks, bristling.  _ You always do this. These past few days, they were just a fluke, weren’t they? _

“A family matter. So of course you couldn’t bother to include me.” 

“No,” Luther protests, “It’s not like that, it’s an Academy--”

“Oh, don’t let me interrupt.” Vanya throws up her hands, and is on her way out.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Allison insists.

Vanya rounds on her. “Fair? There’s nothing  _ fair  _ about being your sister.”

“God, okay, I’ll fill you in later. Don’t make such a big  _ deal  _ out of this.”

Vanya scoffs. She’s been left out of everything for as long as she can remember, and she should be hardened to this by now. She’s thought it for a very long time, even written it in her book, but she’s so silly, for still opening her arms and reaching out to them, again and again. She’s been so stupid, and she feels stupid now, for the way her eyes are burning over.

“You know,” she says, “I used to think it was all Dad, but he’s dead. So as it turns out, you’re the assholes.” 

No one stops her from leaving. No one even comments on it. The only acknowledgment of her leaving comes in the form of a little cackle from Klaus as Leonard scurries back into the hallway to get his coat from where he’d left it, draped over a banister.

The family simply turns, and returns to the business of discussing the end of the world.

Theories are laid out: nuclear war, asteroids, the moon, a full-scale breakout of Hotel Oblivion, the awakening of a vengeful eldritch god...

“Hold on,” Klaus says, around a mouthful of everything bagel, “We  _ died  _ fighting this thing, the first time around.”

“Klaus, shockingly, has a point,” adds Diego. “What gives us a--”

Then, a storm of debris, a blinding blue-white flash, and from a tear in the universe leaps Five, face-first onto the bar, sending a decanter of whiskey sailing into the wall.

“Am I still high, or do you see him too?” asks Klaus from behind the couch he’d leapt to use as cover.

“Five, where’ve you been?” demands Luther, smarting from his perceived abandonment at their ill-fated standoff the day before.

Five ignores him, rolling off the bar to check his stolen pistol. He sighs in annoyance about the Handler’s wastefulness with her ammo (it’s so ungenerous and  _ typical  _ of her to leave him only a single bullet; the Commission never  _ did  _ value sustainability), but promptly shoves the weapon in his shorts and forgets about it.

He snatches Allison’s coffee, finds to his abject disappointment that it is mostly sugar, but inhales it anyway. Running on pure adrenaline, he snaps: “The apocalypse is in three days, and the only chance we’ve got is, well, us. So all of you need to get your sideshow acts together, or we’re screwed. Who the hell cares, if Dad messed us up. We don’t have to let that define us.”

Five digs through his pockets, producing a crumpled sheet of paper and, amidst a shower of hard candies, slaps it down onto the bar. “To give us a fighting chance, I’ve discovered this. The person who’s responsible for the apocalypse.”

Allison unfolds the paper, while each of her brothers grab at the candies and inhale them with the speed and force of Mom’s Hoover. 

“That’s it,” Five’s saying, slurping ravenously at Allison’s coffee, “That’s the guy who does it.”

Diego peers over Allison’s shoulder. “Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?”

* * *

Watch for threats.

That’s what Dad told him, when he was strapped into that rocket, weighted down by thirty pounds of space suit, and shipped off to the Moon. 

He’d been sent up there for a reason, after all. He’d been conducting research for years, gathering field samples, writing reports, offering daily updates. It all has to go somewhere, he’s sure. It all has to  _ mean  _ something, and this must be it, that moment when everything will fall together and the path to the apocalypse will be made clear, where his life’s work for the last four years will suddenly come into focus, and the deep ache in his shoulders will clear up at last. 

Luther has chosen to stay, for this reason. 

He is tearing through the books and binders and folders piled high in his father’s study, for this reason.

It all means something. It has to. And when he finds the reports he’d sent Dad, when he sees the notes Dad had made based on it, he is sure it will all fall into place. 

He just… can’t find it.

Luther’s heart is hammering in his chest. The world ends in three days, maybe even less than that, and he can’t find it, and if he can’t find it, then he can't help save the world, and...

Pogo is peering through the doorway, frowning at the mess he’s made in the study, the blizzard of discarded papers and journals.

“Where is it?” Luther calls, “The papers, the correspondence, the samples,  _ everything  _ I sent down from the Moon?”

“I… I’m not sure,” Pogo stammers, shrinking back. “Your father was a private person--”

The excuses. Pogo’s always got excuses.

Well, today, there just isn’t time for it.

_ “Stop _ it, Pogo! You know  _ everything  _ our dad did!”

Pogo relents, pointing gravely with the gold tip of his cane, to the Persian rug at Luther’s feet.

He kicks it aside, dropping to his knees when he realizes the patterning of the hardwood differs here, that there is a trap door, concealed in his father’s study.

He’s praising him in his head as he tears the door from its hinges and sends it skidding across the sitting room. Dad had such  _ intelligence, _ knowing that Luther’s research may well be too valuable to leave out for just anyone to see. Luthers’s heart is buzzing with excitement; surely, with the extent to which his father had hidden it, he must have found it important. Surely, before him is the key to solving the puzzle of the apocalypse and saving the world…

The space beneath the study floor is packed tight as a bag of marshmallows with familiar, soft shapes. Shapes he recognizes, after a moment, when he runs his rough fingertips over the white, unblemished fabric.

They’re his bundles. The ones he’d sent from the Moon.

Luther tugs one out, then another, then another. He reads the careful notes marked on the front of each one.  _ Day 001. Day 004. Day 015. Day 048. Day 074: Moon rock samples enclosed. Day 192: Oxygen leak. Please send supply refill. Day 255. Day 306. Day 539. Day 877. Day 993. Day 1466: Out of rations, please send food. _

Each and every one of them still bears the strip of bright red tape Luther’d used to seal off the contents inside. He tears the strips off, empties the contents on the floor, stares at his research, then at the red strips, clinging to the fabric of his gloves.

_ Dad never even looked at them,  _ he realizes.

“Why?” he asks, the word leaving him as a whimper. “Why not?”

“Your father,” sighs Pogo, “Was many things. Forthright was not one of them.” 

Luther’s staring at the woodgrain beneath Pogo’s feet. He can’t look at him,  _ won’t  _ look at him.

“After your accident, he wanted to give you  _ purpose, _ Master Luther, and he felt this was the only way.”

“By Shanghaiing me on the Moon for four years?”

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t  _ understand…  _ no. He  _ does. _

“I wasn’t a good enough Number One.”

His face is burning. His ears are burning. His eyes are burning, and he can’t be seen like this, least of all by Pogo, the most untrustworthy set of eyes and ears in the entire house. Luther can’t be seen showing weakness, shouldn’t even  _ have  _ weakness at all, for weakness is what brought him here...

“Please leave me alone,” he says, sounding twenty-five years younger, a wobble in his voice, before crawling to his feet, and lumbering out of the door, so suddenly, painfully aware of his size, and how stupid he looks, squeezing through the doorframe. 

Mercifully, Pogo obliges. 

Luther had always seen it best to play along, with the way things went. 

He’d known, of course, in that deep, instinctual way that living things know, that he was never really  _ safe, _ but it was a beautiful enough illusion, and it was so easy, to keep his eyes on his father, orbiting him like a satellite, drinking in his light, blinding as it was. 

He’d just wanted to believe that the rules he’d been taught to follow existed for a reason. That the world was right, and fair, and ordered.

Now, his sun is gone, and he is flying through wild space, untethered in the dark.

To ease the acceleration, he greases his wheels with the scotch he finds in Dad’s alcohol cabinet, the one he’d always known he’d never been allowed to touch, let alone drink from.

But Dad’s dead now.

He’s dead. And this is Luther’s house now, technically.

He’s dead, and Luther can do what he pleases, and it pleases him now to burn away the sickly feeling in his stomach, to coat his brain in a soft, warm fog and to cry for a while, about how stupid he feels, about how he had freely contributed to the slow erosion of himself. He’s been pulled taut as a rubber band his whole life, and has finally snapped loose.

As if summoned by the mere splash of alcohol in a glass, Klaus trots in.

Having successfully fended off his nausea by pressing his face to the cool porcelain of a toilet bowl, he’s determined that he is ready for the next step in attaining sobriety. 

Diego’s words to him the day prior had taken root in him and stayed, you see; Klaus had thought about them, rolling them over and over in his head as he drifted near the end of his newest high.

Because the thing is, he  _ can  _ see Dave again, can’t he? He just has to be in the right frame of mind.

Hence, the length of bright blue rope, stolen from the dusty gymnasium. He’s pretty sure they’d used it as teenagers, when practicing hogties, and if memory serves, he recalls exactly how much trouble he’d had worming his way out of those. So naturally, it’ll be perfect, for his own purposes.

He’s going to get clean, the only way he knows how: kicking and screaming.

And, knowing painfully well that when he starts kicking and screaming, he’s about a millisecond away from bolting, Klaus has determined that he’s going to have to counteract his lesser impulses before they seize control of him.

So, in short, he needs a spotter. 

Diego, his first choice since Ben is benched by the virtue of Klaus’s current state of mind being Buzzed As Fuck, is unfortunately off chasing serial killers, so he’s decided to settle for Luther, who is…

“... Drinking?” Klaus blurts out. “Oh, my god! It  _ is  _ the end of the world! Dad’s gonna be so  _ pissed!” _

Luther slams down the decanter he’d been nursing.

“Get him,” he snarls, voice cracked with bitterness. “Dad. Do it, now.”

_He needs to answer to me. He needs to own up to what he did._  
“Look, I can’t.”

_ Of course you can’t,  _ Luther thinks, his thoughts sloshing bitterly in his brain, reaching out, and catching him by the throat, bearing him back against the pillars.  _ “Bullshit.” _

He lets go, a second later, and Klaus hits the floor, gagging for a second.

“You know, even if I  _ did  _ call on him, do you really think he’d pick up? I mean, he’s probably in death as he was in life. A stubborn prick.”

Luther’s pressing his forehead into the cool marble of the pillars opposite him, lolling between fury and utter despair. 

There’s a fantasy, pinwheeling in his mind: a warm, bright vision of himself and Allison, dancing, not on the moon, but surrounded among the stars, lit from within with their own internal radiance. In his dream, Allison is beaming. In his dream, he is whole, and his shoulders aren’t so cumbersome, and they don’t ache when he moves. 

He’d sacrificed  _ everything. _ He never left the house, never had friends… and for what?

“This was for nothing,” he says, and the waterworks spill forth again. He’s never been drunk before, isn’t used at all to the way his emotions are sloshing out of him like water from an overfilled bucket. 

“Just relax,” Klaus says, picking himself up and wincing at the sight of Luther, sinking into a sofa older than the both of them combined, downing a full glass of whiskey, “Hey, big guy. You’re fine. Chin up! You know what, let’s go find the others! I’m sure Allison would--”

“No, no, I don’t want her. Nobody can see me like this. What they’re doing is too important, I’ll only hold them back.”

Klaus sighs, sinking down beside him. “Now what’re you talking about, One? Oh, Captain, my Captain!” 

Luther giggles blackly, and it immediately melts into a sob.

“Diego was right,” Luther says, and it hits Klaus all at once how utterly fucked things have gotten, for those three words to leave his brother’s lips. “He sent me up to the Moon because he couldn’t… couldn’t stand. Stand the sight of me.” 

Luther’d clung to the rules like a life raft for thirty years, and it’d gone and sunk on him, and now adrift, he reaches to the first lifeline he sees.

“You know what,” he says, “I wanna be like you.”

_ Dear God. _

“Oh. Oh  _ no. _ No, I don’t think you want that. Honestly, why don’t you just lay down. Sleep it off, you’ll be better in the morning.”

“No, no I  _ do. _ Because you’re always so carefree, and… And I…”

And he knows exactly what he needs to do, if he’s ever going to have that weight pulled off his shoulders. If he’s ever going to feel  _ light  _ again.

Luther springs up, and goes charging out of the house. 

* * *

They find everything they need to know about Jenkins at the police station.

Diego has made a call to Rodriguez (since Beeman won’t answer), to see about any Harold Jenkinses with criminal records, and for his efforts, he receives a bright blue binder slapped roughly into his chest, a cold glare, and a quiet acknowledgment that “This is it, we’re done, Diego,” and then he’s on his way with it tucked under his arm.

See, Diego’s a _leader._ He made the call, he got the file, he has the plan. He’s got this.

It takes him a minute to get back to Five and Allison, the only of his siblings who’d seen fit to actually give a shit about saving the world enough to chase down the target.

They have a few minutes to wait, and Allison spends that time worrying. There’s been a pit in her gut, since she watched Vanya storm out of the house, and Allison doesn’t totally get it. She’s  _ always  _ tried to be a good sister to her, hasn’t she? 

Well. Vanya is clearly upset, and maybe it’s the oncoming end of all things, but Allison’s feeling a little sentimental. She might not even see Vanya at all, actually; Allison’s flight leaves tonight, and she’s helping out with Jenkins where she can, but she’ll be on that plane when it leaves. 

And depending on how things go, she might never see her again.

This isn’t enough, she knows, but it’s something. So she feeds a few coins into a payphone, and leaves Vanya a quick message to let her know that she’s sorry, that she cares, that she’d like to see her again, when the dust settles.

Behind her, Five leans unsteadily against the concrete cornerstone of a finance building, listening to Allison’s quiet, sincere admission. 

When Allison snaps the phone down onto the receiver, she leaps nearly a foot in the air to find that Diego has materialized behind her.

“You’re welcome,” he preens, brandishing the folder, which she snatches and begins paging through.

She stops. Stares at the mugshot. A lance of terror spikes down her spine.

Because what. The fuck.

“What?” asks Diego, seeing the stricken look on her face.

Allison turns the pages towards her brothers, displaying the mugshot for the both of them to see.

“Harold Jenkins is  _ Leonard Peabody,” _ Allison says.

Her brothers are silent.

Then: “... Well who the hell is  _ that?” _

“Vanya’s boyfriend.”

_ “That _ guy?” Diego squints at the mugshot. “The scrawny one she brought to the house?”

“Vanya has a  _ boyfriend?” _ Five frowns.

Allison fills them in on the drive over to Murillo Street, to the very house she’d broken into a day ago. Vanya’s boyfriend is living under a false name, and he’d spent eighteen years in prison for killing his father. And somehow, he is the cause of the end of the world.

Diego is still unconvinced, when they prowl up Peabody’s lawn, and begin peering into his windows. 

“So what’s this guy even want with Vanya?” he wonders.

“Who cares? Let’s ask him after we kill him,” replies Five, watching Allison duck around the side of the house.

Diego stares after her, and sighs. “I’d love it if you guys would stick to the plan. See, I’m gonna jump through the door, and--”

And Five’s already blinked inside.

_ Fine,  _ Diego thinks sourly, and throws himself through anyway, falling in a shower of glass to the hardwood floor, peering up at Allison and Five, staring smugly down at him.

“How’d you…”

“Back window,” replies Allison. “I’ve been here before, remember?”

“You know,” Five says, playing with the knob, “The door was unlocked?”

“Yeah. Great. Spread out. Yell if you’re in trouble. You get it.” Diego limps off to begin digging through the kitchen, the very image of inspiring leadership.

The three fan out, sniffing through the house like hyenas.

Diego pokes at a flyer hanging on the refrigerator, advertising a performance of the St. Pluvium Chamber Orchestra, and the debut of its new principal violinist… Vanya Hargreeves?

Five stares at the couch in the front hall for reasons he doesn’t totally understand. 

And Allison, who’d made immediately for the attic she’d neglected to reach for the last time she’d broken into the house, tugs the ladder down from above, the rusted hinges creaking shrilly in protest.

When she crawls up to the attic, she’s hit with a sweetly sour stench that makes her eyes water, a scent that she recognizes…

“Get up here now!” she shrieks to her brothers, when she registers the graying face staring blankly at her.

Five and Diego are at her side in record time, crawling up into the attic and coughing from low in their throats as the reek of decay hits them. 

“Is that…”

It’s a corpse.

Vanya’s boyfriend has a two-day-old corpse in his attic.

_ It’s not Vanya, _ Allison’s telling herself, staring down at the body, wrapped in plastic.  _ It’s not Vanya, it’s not Vanya. _

“What the hell?” Five hisses through his teeth.

Diego stares just beyond the corpse, to the bright blue violin case leaning against the wall. 

“He kills violinists,” he concludes, incorrectly. “You know how serial killers have types? Well, he’s one, and his type is violinists.”

“Weird type,” Allison mutters, dragging her eyes up and away to look anywhere else.

Five declines to comment, suddenly aware of the rush of blood flooding down the side of his shorts, realizing with a start that crawling up the ladder had reopened his shrapnel wound.

What she sees gives her an even worse feeling than the body did.

Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, the attic is crowded over with Umbrella Academy merchandise. Lunch boxes, stacks of comic books, newspaper and magazine cutouts, and posters. All of it, desecrated: in every poster, their eyes are cut out, their action figure faces are melted like candle wax.

“No, this was  _ never  _ about Vanya,” Allison breathes, “This is about  _ us.” _

Five hits the floor like a sack of rocks.

* * *

Klaus is still looking for Luther well into the night, when his high has dissipated enough to allow Ben to skulk in beside him, frowning concernedly about Luther’s whereabouts and clucking like a mother hen about how he needs to be retrieved.

To be perfectly honest, Klaus is ready to throw in the towel and head home. His feet ache, from the amount of walking he’s been doing, and besides, it’s good for Luther, to be out and about and experiencing the world. It's ending, after all, why  _ not  _ get high and forget about it?

But Ben simply won’t stop clucking away about it, like the mother hen that he is, so Klaus decides to indulge him. 

They find Luther, naturally, in the most obvious place possible. 

Luther, new to benders, to drinking, to dancing, to drugs and any sort of entertainment rated above a PG-13 level in his quest to be like Klaus, had opted for the most ostentatious place Klaus would go.

Which, to be fair. He’s been here, to this particular warehouse done on the waterfront, a  _ lot. _ He’s been arrested here twice. See, there’s the palm tree mural on the wall, that he’d been caught licking on that particularly hairy night when he’d had a little too much LSD.

But still. 

Klaus finds it more than a little disconcerting that Luther was able to find this place with such ease, that in the hours he’s spent wandering after him, he’d somehow lost his coat, sweater, gloves and…  _ shoes? Oh, nice going, buddy. Hope you got your tetanus shot. _

But, he will admit, Luther looks happy, here among the smears of bright, neon-colored light and the deep blue shadows of the rave, pressed in on all sides by sweaty, gyrating bodies. This is the first time since he’s laid eyes on his new body that Klaus has seen Luther uncrushed by the weight of it, the first time he’s actually  _ seen  _ it, instead of inferring the change based on the slope of his back. 

And boy, is it  _ hairy. _

“Do you think he knows?” asks Klaus.

“I don’t think he cares,” replies Ben.

Luther sees him, and catches him by the arm, eyes wide, blurting out. “This is amazing! I love it here!” 

“Great, uh, we need to get you home.” 

“No!” Luther’s panting like a sheepdog, taking Klaus by the hand and slapping a party pill into it. “Here! Try this! It’s really fun, but it’ll make you so thirsty. But it’s fun!”

Klaus instinctively hurls it deeper into the warehouse, and no sooner has it left his hand and skidded onto the concrete a few yards away, vanishing beneath the boots of the ravers, than he’s realized: “Oh, God. Why’d I do  _ that?” _

Klaus doesn’t have a strong grip on his impulses, is the thing. He’s always been puppeted by them, tugged this way, then that, by the quick flashes of his hungry id, and for the most part, he’d been quite content for it to rule him.

And here, in a world of blurred, pulsing color, where the sound makes the air itself shake around him and pulse on the inside of his skull, where he can smell the acrid tang of sweat and substances he’s far too familiar with, where the lights are chopping like helicopter blades, and the stomping of heavy boots against concrete soften, like they’re squelching through the mud on Hill 689, where the air’s thick with humidity, thick enough to choke on...

He’s come unstuck again. He’s coming unmoored, falling back into the past, back into 1968, and there’s one thing that Klaus knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that can tie him to here and now, and it’s across the floor somewhere, caught in a tangle of high heels and light-up sneakers and furry boots.

He starts crawling, grateful that the pounding’s so loud in his ears that he can barely hear Ben, shouting at him to  _ get up, and turn the hell around. _

He doesn’t need to be sober, to see Dave. He’s right there, on the floor, keeled over in a pool of coagulating blood, right there, in his hands… No. 

No, that’s just the drug.

Klaus kneels there for a moment, turning the pill over and over in his fingers, staring at the tiny grooves in its sides, the little insignia stamped into it by whoever’d cooked it up.

Then, he glances off, towards Luther, who’s being sucked away by the swell of the crowd. His great, shaggy back is to Klaus, and a girl in a furry vest who he only seems vaguely aware of is grinding against him like an animal in heat. 

_ Ben’s right,  _ Klaus thinks.  _ This is enough. We need to go home.  _

There’s a man standing next to Luther, with a look of seething, roiling rage twisting his face up. Luther, it seems, is being dragged home by the only girl in the warehouse who has a boyfriend who doesn’t like to share. _ This really is just the best day for him, isn’t it? _

The pill slips from his fingers, crushed to dust beneath his heel as he turns and heads for his brother, his swaying coyote-like way of weaving through the crowd hastening to a jog as he sees the man approaching, cresting into a leap onto the back of his brother’s would-be attacker.

He isn’t totally sure, if he misses, or if his weight bears him down.

But somehow, he closes his eyes, and opens them in a watery world of grayscale.

Klaus sits up on a pleasant tree-lined rural lane, neither warm nor cold, not tired nor wired, not in pain, yet somehow keenly aware that his brain had just bounced off of the inside of his skull in a frighteningly sudden manner that is sure to have done  _ something. _

He isn’t alone. 

On the leaf-strewn path, peering down at him with thinly-veiled disdain, is a little girl, of perfectly ambiguous age and race, seated astride a streamer-laden bicycle with a deep basket at its front, overflowing with flowers. 

“You blend in so well here,” she says wryly. “Being as pale as you are. Is there no sun down there?”

This is God. Right? It’s  _ clearly  _ God…  _ right? _

“Look,” says the little girl who may or may not be God, tilting her wide-brimmed white hat, “You can’t stay here.” 

“Well, why not? Maybe I like it here.”

“To be blunt, I don’t like you all that much.”

_ Yeah, me neither… wait. _

“Hey now, aren’t you meant to love all of us? I mean, all God’s children, right?”

She just looks at him, and he gets the sense that he is encroaching on some very sensitive territory by the way her eyes narrow. “Why? Do you have any other ideas?”

He decides to hold his tongue.

The little girl who may or may not be God clicks her short nail against the bell on her bike. “Time’s flying. You should hurry up.” She tilts her head off into the woods, where Klaus sees a rickety little shack just a few yards into the underbrush. “He’s waiting for you.” 

_ “Who _ is?”

She quirks her lips up knowingly.

“Dave?”

She stares expectantly, which Klaus takes for a  _ yeah, sure. _

Klaus takes off into the woods, a bright flash of anticipation sparking through him. He tears open the splinter-prone door, only to skid across the linoleum tile of a barber shop.

He decides to take it in stride. He’s in limbo, or heaven, or hell, or wherever. He’s probably about to see things that are a lot weirder than a supernatural barber shop lined with the faces of his brothers. Klaus sinks into the plush leather seat of a chair, and sighs.

There are hands on his shoulders; not the rough, long-fingered ones of Dave’s, but a pair that are sharp and bony and gnarled.

“What in God’s name took you so long?”

Just his luck; he goes looking for Dave, and ends up with his  _ other  _ daddy.

He’s pinned to the chair as the spectre of Reginald himself flashes a straight razor with expert precision along the planes of Klaus’s face, flaying into him not with the blade, but with his words, harping on and on about how much of a failure his children are to him, how much of a failure Klaus in particular is, for not summoning him sooner, how much of a waste he’s been, for poisoning himself for decades, for never tapping into his potential…

Wait.  _ Potential? _

Dad, slippery old bastard, slides like an eel around Klaus’s attempts to divine any further information about himself, choosing instead to snarl about how special they were, how they were never just kids, they were meant to save the world...

No. Hold on. 

Dad’s gone on and on about the apocalypse for their entire lives, and maybe it’s the blade scratching at his neck, but Klaus really registers it for the first time.

“You knew? About the end of the world?”

“I knew that I had to bring you all together, one way or another. And the only thing that would’ve done it was something momentous.” 

“You killed yourself.” It’s not a question.

Reginald tuts. So, yes.

_ Jeez, Dad, you couldn’t have picked up a phone?  _

God, he’s pretty sure, doesn’t like him much. That’s the only explanation Klaus can find, when he flickers, mid-sentence, and flashes away. Of course, now, at the most vital point in their conversation, is when he’s resuscitated.

The drone of techno music that was never quite his thing (but yeah, sure, he’d tolerate if it was on) pulses in, bouncing off the inside of his skull, and the stink of a hundred sweaty bodies knocks into Klaus like a hammer.

He stumbles to a crawl at the center of a throng of leather-clad partygoers, all staring down at him with concern, and he waves off their helpful hands. No thanks, nothing to see here, the man behind the curtain is currently trying to stand up without wobbling, and is just looking to leave.

His feet are aching, the blisters on the sides of his toes from where his Converse have rubbed the skin raw and ready to burst. His skin is clammy, and his eyes are glassy, and he just had Dad's face hovering in front of his, and he has no idea what to think, and...

He's done. He's fucking done. 

"You know what?" he says, when Ben hops a few paces ahead of him, to stand in has path and cut him off. "It's one night. Luther will be just fine.  He's a big boy. He can take care of himself. I've had it."

"Oh, that's _real_ magnanimous of you," Ben says.

Ben, who hasn't done shit this whole night. Ben, who just hangs on his elbow and jabbers in his ear like a parrot. Ben, who sat in the mud in A Shau for ten straight months and moralized about _taking the briefcase home already why are you wasting your time here?_

Ben, who'd come back through the timestream with him, instead of Dave.

_Ben, who knows damn well he can't do shit without me._

Klaus sets his mouth into a flat, furious line, and walks right through him, just to remind him.

That shuts him up. Ben turns, staring at Klaus, wide-eyed, choking on his anger.

_Good,_ Klaus thinks sourly, turning away. _Follow me. You know you have to._

Klaus stumbles out into the chill of the night, and he feels like he's walking on glass the whole way home. He keeps his eyes on the inky blue stripe of his shadow the entire time.

* * *

The murder shrine in Harold Jenkins’ attic is promptly forgotten, as Allison and Diego drag Five’s floppy, half-conscious body home. His sweater vest is saturated with blood, and he's babbling faintly, shoving weak, floppy hands at Allison and Diego, trying to bat them away.

They ignore him, dragging him up the stairs to the infirmary.

They cry out, but no one else seems to be home.

Allison is wrist-deep in blood, snapping at Diego to pass her the damn bandages already, when Diego registers the clicking of heels on the tile just beyond the infirmary.

He turns, slowly, staring as the spectre of his mother glides in, utterly shocked that she is up and ambulating about in the way that she is.

“Hello, Diego dear,” she says, and there’s something odd in the tone of her voice; it’s  _ deeper, _ more expressive.

He gapes down at her forearm, at the jagged weld job that melted it back together.

“How are you still… walking around?” 

“One foot in front of the other! Why, how do you do it?” Mom laughs airily, tossing her hair over her shoulder. 

_ It’s down, why is her hair down, it’s never…  _ Wait.

It dawns on him slowly, a thought he doesn’t totally understand yet, but that he nonetheless recognizes to be true: This isn’t Mom, he’s looking at. It’s  _ Grace. _

“Diego, I was looking for you because you’ve received a message,” She’s holding a note in her hands, and he recognizes the stationary from the pad of paper beside the ground floor landline. “One Detective Beeman, calling from Huxley General Hospital.”

“What?”

“Yes, he’s called to let you know that your dear friend Eudora has just exited surgery, and that it is unfortunately unclear at this time if she will pull through.”

Time slows.

He hears Grace talking, but faintly. “... If you like, he is open to allowing you to see her. I took the liberty of taking down the room number on this card...”

He snatches it from her fingers. 

“I have to go,” he’s telling Allison, and she protests, waving a red-stained hand at Five.

“Diego, Five is laying here unconscious. What about Harold Jenkins? We  _ need  _ Five to help us with this.”

“He’ll be fine,” Diego says, already moving towards the door, tugging his jacket over his shoulders. “I have to go, I have to be there. I have to...” 

He’s gone. Inspiring leadership, indeed.

Grace slides smoothly into place beside Allison, reaching for the bandages with practiced, sterile hands, and Allison pulls back, hurrying over to the sink to begin scrubbing the blood from her knuckles.

She finds the file on the counter, and pages through it, pacing out of the infirmary.

She pauses, upon seeing her suitcase beside the front door.

_ Right, _ she remembers.  _ My flight leaves in an hour. I have to go to the airport. I have to go home, I have to see Claire… _

But then she remembers the wide, sightless eyes in the attic. The way she’d watched Vanya leave with Jenkins on her heels. The way she’d teased Vanya about her loneliness, just this week. The way that she’d certainly driven her towards him.

She can’t leave. She _can’t._

She has to find Vanya.

_ He wasn’t at home,  _ Allison thinks, peering through the police file again.  _ And with the mess we’ve left behind, he wouldn’t want to linger if he came back. Which means, if he has her, he’d head somewhere else. Somewhere like... _

There. A second address listed under his name. A cabin, out in Jackpine Cove.

It’s better than nothing, so she decides to take it. 

She leaves a note by the door, grabs her jacket, and heads out.  Diego’s car is gone, new wheels and all, so Allison snatches the keys to Dad’s and leaps behind the wheel, driving out into the dark, completely alone.

* * *

The woodworker formerly known as Harold Jenkins had been born on the seventh hour of the first day of October, 1989, the culmination of a perfectly normal, average pregnancy. 

He had been average in every way, but unfortunately for the world, and for him most of all, the circumstances of his raising would be anything but. 

Though perfectly ordinary, he would soon find that he had a great deal in common with the Umbrella Academy in terms of his raising; in short, he too was a victim of horrific abuse at the hands of a cold, unfeeling father.

(This, of course, he would not know for a great deal of time.)

When Harold Jenkins was a boy, and the Academy had debuted in the chilly winter air outside the steps of a bank, which they had rescued from a particularly sticky hostage situation, he had seen them, and like all children his age, had instantly fallen in love with them. Even if he hadn’t shared a birthday with them, he’d have done so, but this coincidence in their births had only intensified his love.

He had fallen for a fantasy, but this did not make him stupid, nor did it make him delusional; it made him a child, who trusted that the adults in his life would not lie or hurt other children. 

This love would fuel him in his early adolescence, would urge him to get up in the morning and try to be as brave as One, or as tough as Two, or as outgoing as Three, as funny as Four, as smart as Five, or as reflective as Six. It would fill him with bright fantasies of belonging, of a grand house full of children his age, who might love and understand him, and a father who might be kind to him.

He would act upon this love, one spring day in 2003, a few short months after Five’s notorious vanishing; the logic went, the family was wanting for a new member, and as a child who simply  _ must  _ be special too, little Harold Jenkins would gladly slip into Number Five’s place, and fill his shoes. 

He didn’t, to put it delicately.

He’d leapt over the barrier separating the throng of fans from the Hargreeves mansion’s front door, clad in a costume he’d hand-sewn, and caught his personal favorite sibling by the arm.

Rather than responding with a bright, delicate laugh, Three had recoiled in disgust. And rather than patting him on the shoulder, One had caught him by the back of his coat and hauled him roughly away from her, like he would with any other grabby fanboy, of which Allison had many. And rather than smiling down at him paternally, Reginald sneered that he’d never amount to anything.

And, realizing that there was no way out of his father’s house, he’d opted to make his escape in a much different manner.

(A necessary aside: having an abusive father, and then killing said abusive father does not make a person terrible, especially not when said person is a child. However violent or frightening a person’s response to trauma is, one must always direct their ire on the person responsible for the trauma in the first place. 

A second necessary aside: Having a hobby, and falling deeply in love with it in order to make for oneself a safe place to escape within a terrible situation does not make a person terrible. However intensely a lonely, abused child loves a piece of fiction, one must always remember that they are simply looking for a place to call home, and people to occupy it who might love them.

Said asides are necessary, because the Hargreeves siblings, deeply misguided as they are, are quite a ways from understanding this. And because many among this readership likely are as well.)

Harold Jenkins had served eighteen years of his time, and was released quietly, at which time he returned quietly to his grandmother’s house, quietly changed his name, quietly got a job as a woodworker at a store that he would someday own upon its proprietor’s retiring, and quietly lived an ordinary life. 

The event that had turned his heart cold, and his intentions terrible, had occurred just under five short years ago, when he’d picked up a copy of  _ Extra Ordinary _ in the bargain bin at the used book store, a few weeks after his release, and his childhood obsession with the Academy had been stoked again like a long-dormant flame.

You see, Harold Jenkins, now going by Leonard Peabody,  _ loves  _ the Umbrella Academy.

He loves them so ferociously, so single-mindedly, that he has come to privately believe that the Umbrella Academy is  _ his. _ He understands them, you see. He understands them better than any of the other simpering, small-minded fans trailing after them, because he is  _ just like  _ them.

And because he is just like them, there is simply no excuse for their behavior.

See? He’s just like them, and he’d pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made something of himself. He’d grown up, he’d gotten a job, he has a home and a life. Hell, he even participates in charity auctions for at-risk youth. He’s a damn saint. And if he can be one, the greatest heroes of his childhood ought to have been able to as well.

But they didn’t, did they?

Leonard Peabody had read the tabloids cheekily discussing Allison Hargreeves’ wooden acting capabilities, and chatting briefly about Klaus Hargreeves’ latest overdose and Diego Hargreeves’ humiliating ousting from the City Police Academy, and Luther Hargreeves’ vanishing to the moon.

But the book was the final straw, proving each and every one of them to be a miserable failure. One and Two and Three and Four and Five were not at all what he’d imagined them to be. They weren’t glowing beacons of righteousness, but real, flawed people.

He’d found this unacceptable, and decided that they had to be punished. And when the news of the family patriarch’s death broke, Peabody sat up in his seat and thought, who better than he, who loves them so  _ dearly, _ to bring them into line and destroy them?

So. You know the rest: Peabody waits, carefully, outside the Hargreeves mansion on the day of the funeral. He sees Number Four stumbling drunkenly from the mansion, sees him toss a book into the dumpster, and retrieves it, finding it to be none other than the journal of Sir Reginald Hargreeves himself. He reads it, commits its contents to memory, and makes an appointment with long-neglected Number Seven.

And now, only a few short days later, she is eating out of his hand. 

He marvels at her, truly, as he drives her out of the city, out to Jackpine, to his grandmother’s former cabin; only a few short hours ago, he had heard her wretched family whispering his name, while he’d been retrieving his jacket (and, of course, the missing collector’s edition action figure of Sir Reginald for his collection) from the banister. He’d heard his name, and her siblings snarling about how must be stopped, and smartly decided that the best place to be was the fuck out of Dodge.

She’s a wonder. 

Not simply in how she too is furious with her family, though that is much of it: Somewhere deep beneath all those layers of repression, she is angry. She must be, she wrote that book after all, and she's just lying to herself. And he must tease it out of her, must teach her how to break free from their toxic bonds before she becomes just like them. Unlike the rest of them, she is still redeemable. 

But it is also her power. That so much of it could be coiled in such a small, particular form… oh, it  _ mystifies  _ him. He’d seen only a glimpse of it, in how she’d curled the street lamps and shaken the rain from the sky this morning, when she’d charged out of the house in a fury after her family had predictably rejected her. He’d seen only a glimpse, and according to her father’s notes, there is so much more.

She takes his hand into hers, and kisses it, and he tightens his grip around her fingers. A part of him, that lonely, underfed, human part of him he’d swallowed and smothered when he’d chosen years ago to spend his days stewing in hate of her family, flickers at her touch. (Most of this relationship is a farce, a necessary farce, so he might be in a position to guide her, but every now and again, he starts to  _ wonder.) _

They arrive, late in the afternoon, and Vanya beams at his grandmother’s cabin, the cabin that he ordinarily uses as a vacation home. He doesn’t come out here much, which is why the old photo of him and his dad is still on the mantle. Otherwise, he’d have tossed it into the pond.

Vanya catches him staring at it, places a hand on his elbow, asking him if he’s alright.

Leonard sees no harm in telling her, so he does: “You spend your whole life trying to forget what happened to you as a kid, you know? And then the second you step back in, you feel just as insignificant.” 

She gets it. She's very perceptive, when it comes to some things.

But enough about him. This is about her. This is no longer just a family home, but a training space for Vanya.

That is, once he convinces her she has powers.

_ Really. _ She’s a little stupid, if he has to be honest. He’d watched her bend metal with her mind, and told her that it could have only been her who’d done it, and still, her empty little head won’t connect the dots. Thank God he’s here, to guide her along.

But he’s patient, isn’t he? He’ll have the weekend to teach her. Maybe even longer, if she can be persuaded to stay, which he’s sure she can be.

They wait until nightfall, because with a power this big, it’s probably best to avoid any witnesses.

It’s then, with the cool blue dusk fading, that he guides her down the worn dock, to the edge of the pond, which lays before them as still and smooth as a mirror. 

Her power, he’s learned, has to do with sound. And he’s thinking, with a surface like a pond, they might be able to do something extra special, might be able to see it flow from her in a way that he simply couldn’t otherwise.

But she’s still resistant, staring at the boat he’d sent to drift, and shaking her head. Even when she agrees to reach out, to visualize the boat in her mind and imagine pushing it, at his behest, she’s treating it like a joke, giggling girlishly when she sticks her hands out, screws her eyes shut, and gives it a try. 

“What’s funny?” 

“I look and feel ridiculous,” Vanya says, playing with the ends of her deep blue windbreaker, “Honestly, I don’t understand how they did this stuff with a straight face.”

He wants to shove her into the water.

“Well, that’s because you’re not taking it seriously!”

Vanya tilts her head. “You are so invested in this.”

“Of course I am! Think about it,” he insists. “You can do what people with power can do. You can stand up for people who can’t defend themselves.”

_ You can stand up for me. You can avenge me. You can do it all for me. _

Leonard’s right, is the thing. He’s lying, but he’s telling the truth; not his own, but a truth nonetheless. Vanya’s a Hargreeves, raised in the shadow of the Academy. She’s always wanted to be a hero.

But she’s grown up with heroes. She knows how high the price can be.

“At what cost?” she protests, “I’ve watched everything my brothers and sister could do  _ ruin  _ their lives.”

“They’re full of holier-than-thou bullshit,” he snaps, and he can tell he’s overstepped by the way she cocks her head, so he steps back a bit: “Like you said,  _ that’s  _ what’s ruined their lives. And that won’t happen to you.”

Vanya’s unconvinced, and he decides to pull back, decides to approach this with delicacy, like surgery.

She’ll just need a little push. 

So, he gives it to her, in the form of three men, inebriated and swaying in the parking lot around his truck, acting the part of the subpar television drama drunk roughnecks, the sort that slap around women and threaten to violate them.

The lines they parrot are cheesy, the kind he’d recall from countless police procedurals.

_ Real cheesy, but you get what you paid for, _ Leonard supposes, and then immediately retracts his thought, as their boots drive their way into the soft flesh of his gut with such ferocity that he feels a stab of real fear, at the thought that they might’ve forgotten that this is meant to be a farce.

Vanya’s scream tears through the air, and she’s twisting viciously in the grasp of one of the men, pulling loose as rain pounds down from the clouds gathering overhead, slipping across the slick pavement to stand over Leonard.

Her heart’s slamming away in her chest, her hair’s sticking to her face in sodden ropes, and she can hear the wet wheeze of Leonard beneath her.

And a cold knife of rage stabs through her, at the thought that he’d been hurt.

It strikes her deep in her heart, catches on the sputter of an old car left idle and empty across the lot as its engine threatens to shake itself out of the hood, and then bursts out of her all at once, a hammer of percussive energy that roars out of her and sends each of the men flying across the lot, into cars, into signs, into the fence.

The sensation stays with her, long after she’s relocated to the sterile hall of the nearby hospital, long after she’s heard the news that Leonard has lost his eye in the skirmish, and will need to stay the night for further observation. 

She sits, staring at her pale, shaky hands, thinking of the terrible power that had thrummed in them, of the way the rain had leapt off her arms and shivered at the sound of her scream.

The thick film of enchantment that’d long settled over her mind at last begins to clear, countered at last by the burden of unmistakable truth, and Vanya can finally make out the light that it’d obscured: the simple, horrifying fact that she is anything but ordinary.


	5. get my poor self together

There’s a storm looming ahead of Allison, darker than dark, peering down at her like a giant on the horizon, whose reach she has finally passed into as the first drops of rain patter against the window.

Behind her, it’s perfectly clear, and the wind is at Allison’s back, urging her car onwards, so Allison assumes that her westbound flight is still on.

She glances at the little clock on the dashboard; yes, it’s a quarter to midnight, and her flight left fifteen minutes ago. 

It’s a strange thought: somewhere, thousands of feet above Allison, Perseus Airlines Flight 263 is taking off at this very moment, sailing across the inkspill-dark sky. On that flight, there is a seat in First Class that is vacant, that would’ve been occupied by Allison had she left for the airport only hours earlier.

In a strange, disconnected sort of way, Allison imagines herself there, sitting in the plush leather, sipping vodka and paging through a murder mystery she’d plucked up at the airport bookstore, using the burn of the booze and the soapy thriller to distract her from the unease gnawing in her belly.

For a moment, she imagines reaching over, squeezing the gloved, pawlike hand resting on the seat next to her, peering up and smiling shyly at its owner, her chest fluttering with butterflies. 

Her eyes are welling up. She needs to stop thinking about that. Maybe in some other universe, some kinder one where everything fell into place, she’d have gotten to do it. But that’s not the world she lives in, and she’d done it to herself. She’s lived in fantasies for so long, and look at where that’d left her.

Alone, driving headlong into the storm.

She has a white-knuckle grip on the wheel of her father’s car, and it’s skidding across the road in a way that makes her stomach pitch with anxiety at the thought of finding herself wrapped around a telephone pole. No one’s on the road as far as her eyes can see, and she’s grateful that no one’s around to see her like this. 

Allison likes to think it’s the rain slashing across the road that’s making her weave like a madwoman between the lanes, and it’s a nice thought, so she clings to it. 

_It’s the rain,_ she tells herself. _It’s the rain, and it’s not that I’ve never had to drive much at all. It’s not that I’ve always had drivers carting me around, or that I made the DMV hand me my license without even taking the test. It’s the rain._

It’s the rain. That’s it.

She’s in the heart of the storm now, the water rumbling against her windshield, wheels spraying up slashes of muddy water. The wind is howling at her windows, and the way it moans reminds Allison of that museum heist, the one she’d helped stop when she was fourteen, the one she told Claire about the last night she’d seen her. 

The last night. 

Allison doesn’t like to think about it. It’s been easy enough to avoid before; in the seven months since her divorce, Allison’d thrown herself into press and partying and premieres, into sips of champagne and the occasional line of cocaine, into the babble of famous friends whose names she can’t recall. All the bright, beautiful things that she blinds herself with.

Now, sitting in her father’s car, the chilled humidity clinging to her like a hideous fur coat, she has none of them, and now she has no choice but to think long and hard about it.

It’s not that she did anything _bad,_ it’s not...

Here’s the thing: Allison loves her daughter. 

She’ll never admit it to anyone, but she hadn’t loved her right away. She hadn’t _wanted_ her, right away, had stared at that pregnancy test in the bathroom of her trailer with her mouth hanging open. She was in the middle of a shoot, a month out of her last relationship and into her new one, and she’d only decided to go through with it when she stared, hungrily, at the cover of _StarWeek,_ at the way the pregnancy of a famed reality star lovingly ate up the entirety of it, and she had realized that such loving attention might be lavished on her, if she’d only go through with it. 

It had been wonderful, the vortex of camera flashes and gushing praise, as Allison announced her engagement to Patrick, as the photos of their magnificent wedding made national news, as she revealed her pregnancy. She’d gotten strung out on the adoration, she’d loved it so _much._

But by the time she’d started to show, something deep and tectonic within Allison had shifted. It dawned on her, slowly, over those months, that motherhood might be something she _wants,_ something she’s wanted for a long, long time. And when Claire had been plucked from between her sticky thighs, pink and shrieking, Allison found herself overcome with a love so fierce and deep that she was crying for no reason at all. 

Allison _loves_ her daughter.

Her love never ran out. Her patience did. 

She just doesn’t know how to be a mother, is the thing. The only model of motherhood she’d ever had had been in the form of a perfect wire housewife, who could never tire, never frown, never lose her temper, never be inconvenienced, never be anything less than perfectly pleasant at all times.

And Allison, contrary to the star machine narrative, isn’t perfectly pleasant even some of the time. 

Allison knows the parameters of her power well. She knows the subject of her rumor must be capable of understanding her for it to take effect. She knows that babies can’t be rumored. She’d known, throughout Claire’s infancy and toddlerhood, that she’d have little choice but to stick it out, and she did.

But when she’d turned three, suddenly, Allison had _options._

And, well.

 **(I heard a rumor that you** **_stopped crying._ ** **)**

She said she’d only do it once. 

But it was just so _easy._ Claire was suddenly the most well-behaved child in her class, and each and every one of her nannies and teachers and school friends’ parents had nothing but praise for her, and for Allison’s excellence in mothering such a mannerly child.

And… _well._

It was easy, and Allison had a hard upbringing that taught her that the easy way out is the one that rewards, the one that lets her join the soccer team without playing a day in her life, the one that keeps her safe in a standoff, the one that gets her troublesome brothers to fuck off and leave her alone, the one that wins her makeup and magazines in a house where she’d only been allowed uniforms for the first twelve years of her life.

So. She took it. And took it. And took it.

 **I heard a rumor you like broccoli,** and _suddenly,_ she doesn’t _have_ to waste her time on convincing her daughter why she has to eat healthily, time she could spend having brunch with her publicist, looking over her tabloid presence and weighing the pros and cons of which perfume to endorse.

The massive tantrums and the tiny annoyances suddenly had a miracle cure-all. Any parent would’ve done the same. Any parent would love to fast-forward through the difficulties of motherhood, through long, uncomfortable conversations with one’s child about why it’s important to talk about their emotions, about why they need to learn to dress themselves, about why they need to say _please_ and _thank you._ That’s what Allison always told herself.

But as the years went on, a horrible, burning feeling begun brewing in her whenever she’d use it, a crawling anxiety skittering through her mind like a swarm of freezing cold insects at the glowing captions to candid photos of her shopping with her daughter on her hip, whispering, _if they knew, they’d hate me._

She knew, in some quiet, wordless way, that what she was doing was wrong. She’s always known.

The truth is, that last night had been coming for a very long time.

That last night, tucked into bed with Claire in her enormous, fluffy bed, in her beautiful bedroom, the kind of bedroom Allison had chosen in a catalogue and willed to life. The one with a library of brightly-colored picture books, with the jungle of life-sized stuffed animals that Allison would add to every time she felt a little guilty about what she was doing with Claire. 

That last night, when Claire had been old enough to start to learn about her mother’s childhood exploits, when Allison, prone to prevarication, saw fit to indulge her with carefully-constructed stories about them.

That last night, when Claire, like any other small child, had been resistant to her bedtime, when Allison **heard a rumor that you’re really tired, and that you want to go to sleep.**

She’d felt him, before she’d seen him. 

She’d turned, and there on the threshold was Patrick, staring at her, realizing all at once exactly what she’d done, what she’d been doing all along.

Allison knows her power, and she knows what negates it. She knows that task-based rumors terminate as soon as the job is carried out. She knows that the ones based in emotion or thought, the stickier ones designed to last long and long, dissipate once the subject is faced with irrevocable proof that what they think or believe is not so.

Allison doesn’t know, exactly, if her spell over Patrick broke. She doesn’t know if Patrick, faced with the sight of his wife twisting the tiny mind of their child, had suddenly been exposed to the thought that she might do it to him too. She doesn’t know if he doesn’t love her at all, or if he still aches for her, and had simply chosen their daughter over her. 

She doesn’t know him well enough to tell. She hadn’t given herself the chance to get to know him.

That evening they’d met, they were at some red carpet or another. She doesn’t remember the reason for the event, but she remembers the dress she’d been wearing; the way the shoulders curled like the hood of a cobra, the intricate emerald beading that shimmered in the bluish light, the way the neckline plunged. He’d come up to her, had started flirting, had gotten that date free of anything. She’d been single for less than a week, and been hungry for a rebound. 

She dated a lot, back then, because that’s what hot actresses do in Hollywood; they date. They go out to upscale restaurants with famous actors and musicians and producers, and they smile for cameras at red carpets, and they open their legs and they date.

Allison, thanks to her beauty and her fame and her money and her power, had her pick of the litter. 

And pick she did; she’d been a teenager, when she’d gotten here. She’d been as eager as she was anxious to finally be able to _do_ something about her blossoming sexuality and _be_ with someone, but really, more than anything, she just wanted to be _with_ someone.

In the twelve years since she’d gotten her first boyfriend, Allison had allowed herself at most a month between lovers. She went frantically from one to the next, always grasping for something out of reach, always with someone but never truly intimate; she’d been far too mistrusting for that. 

She’d been raised to watch for threats, to assume the worst, to look at a shadow in the dark and determine how it would kill her. And what’s more, she could never give any of them a chance to know her; if they did, they’d leave. 

Patrick had been no exception. When he’d leaned in and admitted that he liked her, that she was _nice to look at, nice to be with,_ she’d smiled wanly and her heart had shuddered.

Before he kissed her goodnight, she leaned in and made sure that in his mind, she’d stay like that.

 **(I heard a rumor that you love me.)**

Allison plants her foot on the gas, listens to the engine growl beneath her feet. She doesn’t know why she’s doing this; maybe some part of her thinks if only she’ll speed fast enough, she’ll outrun all these awful thoughts. 

An entire pack of cigarettes is polluting the cupholder. It’s that crappy German brand Klaus uses, the one with the name she can’t quite recall, that she’s certain is unpronounceable and pretentious. The car reeks, thick with acrid smoke. Allison’s choking on it, coughing thickly; she’s new to smoking. She’d only taken it up after the divorce. 

Allison, who’d spent her childhood keenly aware of how important her voice is, is also keenly aware of how dangerous smoking will be to it. The logic had gone, that if she punished herself every time she used her rumor, self-preservation would kick in, and she’d eventually wean herself off it. Then, she’d be worthy of reentering Claire’s life. 

It just… doesn’t seem to have happened yet, and she doesn’t...

Her eyes are blurring; the rain’s _inside_ the car now, it’s… it’s… Oh _fuck._

She’s hydroplaning.

She’s _hydroplaning,_ and there’s a shrill metal screech as the side of the car tears against the barrier.

It’s not the impact that terrifies her, but the sound.

Something about it, about shrill as a rusted steel door swinging open, sends a freezing blast of fear tearing down her spine. It makes her skin crawl, makes her choke on the smoke in her mouth, makes her jerk the wheel just far enough to send the car skidding off the road and into the mud.

Only by yanking wildly does she come screeching to a halt on the shoulder, parked crookedly at a sharp angle that sends the binder on the passenger’s side seat sliding down and clattering into the crack between the seat and the door.

Allison coughs, and coughs, and coughs, staring out at the narrow windshield, at the shape of her head, illuminated by the overhead light. She’s just a faceless shadow floating in the dark, caught in a frame of glass.

Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, nestled among the wispiest of her memories, she hears it: ... **I heard a rumor that you think you’re just...**

There’s too much smoke. She can’t make it out.

She rolls down the window and the rain pours in.

  
  


* * *

Leonard had been in a rush to leave, and though the way he frogmarched her through the sterile halls made Vanya feel a little uncomfortable, she had ultimately been inclined to agree with him. She’s always hated hospitals; the bright white halls, bouncing light off every surface, the constant bustling of strange bodies, the _smells…_

She’s grateful that they’re back at the cabin now. They’ll be here for the next day or so, as Leonard will need to return to the hospital to be fitted for a prosthetic eye, but she’s okay with that. The cabin’s a good place, quiet and calm, and she shouldn’t be around so many people, given what she’s just done.

Two of the men that’d attacked them are dead. They’re dead because she killed them. Two people are dead, and the third is in critical condition, and they were trying to hurt them, she knows, but they were people, with lives and families and friends who’ll be destroyed by what she’s just done. 

“It’s not your fault,” Leonard is saying, but she can tell by the catch in his voice that he is lying to her.

Vanya tightens her arms around her middle, as if it’ll keep the power from leaking out.  
_“You_ saw what happened. It just _surged_ out of me like a… like a tidal wave. And it killed them. _I_ killed them.”

“You were acting in self defense. You were defending me.”

“I shouldn’t be able to do that.” 

“But you can. You have power, Vanya. A _gift.”_

Vanya’s daydreamed about this very thing since she was a child. The day that her powers would suddenly kick in, and Dad and the family would look down at her, little Number Seven, and realize that she was one of them after all, that her extraordinariness had been subtle and elusive, or else that she’d simply needed a little more time for her power to find her. There’d even been a three-month stretch of weekly free time with Five and sometimes Ben when they were ten, which they spent testing for some secret power that might’ve been too subtle to notice at first.

But it’s here now, and it had been here all along, frozen over until it shattered loose, surged up from deep within her and found her at last, and now she has a _power, now she’s special..._

She’s been special for only a day, and she’s already killed two people. 

_Some gift,_ she thinks, hanging on tightly to each of her breaths before they can slip out of her and shudder away. _Of course I can’t use it right._

“It’s like, with the boat.” She draws a hand up to her face, starts rubbing the bright pink indentation from where she’d pressed her hand into it as she slept at his hospital bedside. “If I try to do it, I can’t, and if I _don’t_ try, people die. It’s just another thing that I can’t do right.”

“Don’t say that.” He rests a hand on her forearm. “This stuff, that’s happening to you? It’s scary. But, you know, maybe we can control it. Make it less of a tidal wave, more… ripple?”

 _Okay,_ she thinks, nodding quickly, melting into his arms as he holds her close. 

There’s a forest preserve right next to Jackpine, and it’s only a fifteen minute drive away.

There, Vanya and Leonard hike the trail to its deepest point and then leaving it behind them entirely, hopping the waist-high, crumbling wooden fence and climbing through the thick underbrush until they find a clearing secluded enough for Leonard’s liking.

Vanya isn’t totally sure if they should be doing this, if they’re not breaking some rule by being out this deep in the woods, if Leonard should be doing this much moving with an injury as severe as a missing eye. The sky’s flat and gray, and the cool humidity’s making her hair cling to her neck, and she wishes she hadn’t come to the cabin without thinking to pack a hair tie. 

But he’s so insistent on helping her. He has so many ideas, too, he’s been telling her them as they’ve walked. That she might be able to use her powers in a controlled environment, but since the world is simply too complicated, she must learn to locate control in another form.

The idea makes sense to her, catching deep and ringing in her ears like a high note just outside the range of hearing. It’s familiar, in a way that makes her heart skip a beat.

So, Vanya decides to try.

She closes her eyes, and _concentrates._

Leonard is going over last night with her, going over the events that lead to her outburst. The laughter... the clatter of beer cans... the drive of boots into Leonard’s ribcage… the engine. 

“It was the sound of the engine,” she realizes, eyes snapping open. “It’s like… everything went quieter and quieter, _except_ for the truck engine. That got louder, and _louder,_ until it was all I could hear. It started to resonate inside my mind, it came to life inside of me and then it just spilled over.”

“Vanya, this is--”

“Terrifying.”

“--Extraordinary,” he says, staring at her, almost ravenously.

A prickle of unease shoots down Vanya’s spine, and she glances around, searching for the flash of a face among the sea of green surrounding her.

There’s nothing. She’s so silly, being this paranoid. He cares about her. She’s lucky that he cares about her.

He urges her to try again, and she obeys, closing her eyes, focusing solely on what she can hear. She imagines spreading herself wide and far, reaching out with invisible fingers to grasp at the sounds floating around her. They form textures in her mind, which she offers up to Leonard: The wind chimes, chittering icily back at the cabin. The scratch of the claws of a squirrel as it races up a tree. The soft rush of water running in the creek, just over the hill. 

“Good,” he praises her, “Now try what you did last night again. Let all the other sounds drop away, and focus on one. Let that one sound resonate in you.”

Okay. This is good. She can do this, she thinks.

Vanya tries it. 

She reaches out again, sifting through the sounds, like she might to a handful of sand, letting them all fall away, save one.

The soft babble of the creek chatters into her, rumbling through her bones and shaking her from the inside, taking up residence in her lungs and making them shudder.

Her breaths are long and ragged, and all around her, the trees are trembling, oh, the sound’s spilling out of her now, she’d taken too much and it’s filled her up entirely and left no room for air, and now it’s overflowing, sending a cascade of green leaves down upon them... 

There’s something else, something… stuck to the sound, the sharp singing of glass shattering in the back of her head, a sound that’d caught in her years ago, and rotted in the back of her mind, almost like…

“Vanya,” Leonard’s calling, and she can feel the warm pressure of his hands clasping around her elbows. “Vanya, breathe!”

Breathe. Right. 

In. Out. In. Out. 

And all around her, the trees go still.

“There you go,” Leonard says, beaming in front of her. 

“I stopped it,” Vanya realizes.

“It’s tied to your emotions,” he says, so certain.

“How do you know?”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” He runs a hand through her hair, laying out his theory: that she reaches out, pulling the sounds within her and transforming them into energy, when she’s concentrating, or else when she’s emoting strongly enough.

She nods quietly. It makes sense; her powers had only just awoken in the past few days, hadn’t they? They’d awoken when she’d met him, they’d awoken _because_ of him.

A flood of affection sweeps over Vanya, and she takes him by the face, kissing him deeply. 

All around her, the forest sings, the leaves shushing, the branches creaking…

There’s one crack, sharper than the rest, and Vanya feels the branch fall before she sees it, wrapping her arms around Leonard’s middle and shoving the both of them roughly to the far side of the clearing, right before it crushes them.

He’s laughing, the hideous sound shaking the air around Vanya's head.

 _We’ve been out here too long,_ she thinks. _So much has happened, he’s acting odd because he’s tired. We need to go back._

She stares back, at the jagged branch that could've shattered her skull, pointing at her like a witch's finger.

She'd done that. She'd nearly killed them both.

"That's enough," she whispers, as Leonard pulls her into a tight, firm hug, and coos reassurances in her ear. "That's enough."

* * *

Allison, after taking into account the ragged scar her tires had left in the mud and the gash in the side of her car, had decided to sleep through the storm. It would not do, she believed, to not be able to rescue Vanya because she’d gone and gotten herself in a car wreck in the country before she’d even found her.

So, she’d reclined the seat, and gotten a few fitful winks of sleep, punctuated by a particularly horrific dream about wandering through the guts of a great monster, about crawling into it’s fanged stomach as its jaws screeched metallically.

She woke up crying, her mouth tasting of ash.

But she’d awoken to a dark sky, in the hours before dawn, and so it was safe to smear her tears away with the heel of her hand and finish the four-and-a-half-hour drive to Jackpine Cove; she’d made it only halfway, before she’d had to stop.

When she found her way down the shady, tree-lined lane leading to the Jenkins cabin, it’d been early morning on a particularly grim, overcast day. No one was on the road yet but her, and she was grateful. 

At last, she saw the cabin itself, nestled around a densely-shrubbed bend in the road, and Allison announced herself by running square into the mailbox, sending it thunking to the ground.

She decided to pretend that it was intentional on her part. 

Allison crept around the cabin, her footfalls light and her head low to the ground, peering in each and every window. Hers was the only car in the driveway, so she concluded she’d be the only person here, and the nearest neighbor is half a mile away, but she was still cautious. 

The cabin was dim inside, and reminded her, oddly enough, of the mansion, with its shadowed corners and taxidermied animals displayed everywhere. Shelves were sagging from the weight of the books crowded on them, there were little carved animals scattered everywhere, and the mantlepiece was _ugly_ in a way that Allison found it difficult to find words for. 

And there, on a chair in the living room, exactly the proof she needed: Vanya’s scuffed violin case. 

Vanya had been here, and she would be coming back, assuming that Jenkins hadn’t killed her already.

The thought had terrified Allison, that she might already be too late, and it charged her with nervous energy. She simply couldn’t afford to sit around and wait, so she decided to try her luck in town.

So far, to her utter disgruntlement, she’s found nothing. She’s driven in a loop around Jackpine Cove twice, staring at any of the passersby to see if she can recognize Vanya among them.

She tries a different approach, stopping at a kitschy little tourist shop, with carved boats and lakebirds, and an entire wall of singing bass. At the sight of the latter, she curls up her nose in disgust, vowing to never, _ever_ tell Klaus about this place, for fear of what havoc he might wreak with one of the novelty fish.

Allison waves the mugshot of Jenkins at the cashier, who hasn’t seen him, and leaves in a huff.

And promptly gets stuck in traffic.

Allison reaches for her lighter, curses when she realizes she can’t sense any fluid sloshing around in the translucent pink plastic, and tosses it angrily back onto the seat. 

Her car’s been brought to a standstill by some accident at a restaurant ahead; Allison can hear the whining of sirens, and it occurs to her that she might be able to ask an officer about Jenkins, so she drags her car out of the line, parks it lopsidedly on the shoulder, flips off a few particularly bitchy drivers, and strides out. 

And pauses, when she gets close enough to see the scarf, hanging from a breakfast buffet sign in front of the taped-off scene.

It’s Vanya’s. She’d seen her wearing it yesterday.

Allison tugs it down, running her fingers along the soft wool. 

Alright. She’d been here. Jenkins had taken here, likely to eat. She just doesn’t know whether it’d been this morning or last night. 

Allison turns, and charges right past the yellow tape, intent on entering the restaurant, when a sharp bark from one of the officers interrupts her.

He’s ordering her back, snapping about how she’s treading all over the scene of an accident.

“What accident?” she asks, and even from a distance, she can see a jaw set.

“The _line,_ ma’am.”

Oh. She sees. He can’t tell who she is, from this far away.

Allison waits, watching him tread up to her with his hands on his hips. 

Sure enough, when he’s close enough for her to make out his nametag (Officer Cheddar, how _quaint),_ she sees his heavy brows shoot up into his hairline.

“Holy shit!”

Being famous is it’s own superpower. She really _does_ love it.

Suddenly, he’s melted, has gone warm and amicable and even holds the neon-yellow police tape up for her to step under. She knows for certain he’ll never bring up her trespassing again, now that he’s shaking her hand and beaming at her, Allison Hargreeves, here in the middle of fuckall nowhere.

She looks at him, and wonders which of her characters he sees when he’s looking at her, folding her hands carefully in front of her midriff. 

“You were in that Sandra Bullock movie! The one about the underpaid teachers who rob a bank!”

Oh, right. That one. 

“That’s me,” she says, peeling her lips up in what she hopes is a good enough imitation of a smile.

Here’s the thing: The star persona holds, until you get close enough to meet her. Then, it smears away, and you see Allison herself. Your eyes twitch, just a bit, your smile dims as you realize she isn’t as vibrant and bubbly as she is onscreen. Now is a bad time for her to not be warm and placid, and it drains her so much, to pretend that she is.

After years of isolation, Allison had been left prickly and unpersonable more often than not. Her efforts at warmth, while well-practiced, tend to be so artificial that most people are put off by them. Her smiles are always a little too stiff, too quick to betray how much they hurt the corners of her mouth, and everyone, at least out in California, could tell. 

She hadn’t come to Hollywood with nothing. She was Number Three, one of the six most famous teenagers on the planet. She was The Rumor, the only girl on the team, the subject of the entire world’s attention, the girl every schoolgirl in America wanted for a best friend, and every schoolboy in America wanted for a girlfriend. She was Allison Hargreeves, only notable daughter of Reginald Hargreeves, one of the richest men in the world.

She had a lot going for her, even then. 

So she got auditions, at first. She was in the room of every prominent casting call, was pushed to the top of every shortlist with the power of nepotism alone, and she was quite fine with that.

The thing that cut her off was her talent. Her tendency to blink during takes, to stumble over her lines, to overenunciate everything. The clear, blaringly obvious truth that she may look like a movie star, but she certainly can’t act like one. 

She auditioned for three miserable months, but she was never cast. Allison Hargreeves was _unwanted_ for the first time.

Until. 

**(I heard a rumor I’m perfect for the role.)**

She said she’d only use it once. 

But the sting of that indifference had sunk deep into her, and she found herself willing to do just about anything to avoid that pain in the future.

So, well. She built her portfolio. 

She snatched the biggest, brightest roles and made sure that each and every one of her directors gave her glowing reviews, despite her painfully obvious lack of talent, and her stubborn refusal to attend acting classes; it’s the principle of the thing, you see. If she takes them, if she takes any sort of direction, then she admits that her craft needs work. And she can’t have that. She can’t be imperfect, you see, she’s Allison, she’s _special._

 **I heard a rumor that I did it in one take,** and just like that, no one can ever question what she’s doing there, at least, during production. No one can tell her she did a bad job, and once her good reputation got rolling, it started to precede her.

With her rumor, Allison has more freedom than any actress has ever had. She’ll never need to do a paycheck gig, or put up with a lackluster role in the hopes that it might be a stepping stone to something larger. She’ll never be beholden to a studio or producer or director. Every single role she’s ever had is one she’d wanted.

Allison, in short, could have done anything. 

She could have _been_ anything. She could’ve headlined the biggest action franchise in the world, but she’d turned down every script that involved an action scene, anything with violence; she’d had enough of it to last a lifetime. She could’ve swept the Oscars ten years in a row, could’ve filled the halls of her minimalist Calabasas mansion with every award in the business, but she didn’t care about awards. She could’ve been artsy and intellectual and heady, but she turned down anything experimental, anything political, anything made by a director too small to recognize. She could’ve been a bigger sex symbol than Gina Barbeux, but she didn’t want sex.

Allison could have been anything in the world, and she had chosen to be loved. She had chosen romance and happy endings, cutting her teeth on teen romance pics, transitioning into feel-good dramas and romantic comedies. 

“You know, to be honest, my wife and I? We prefer you in those romantic comedies. I mean, _Love on Loan?_ We just saw the third one! You’re gonna make a fourth, right?”

See? People love to love her. It worked.

 _Love on Loan._ Of all the things she’s worked on, she thinks that trilogy might make her skin crawl the most.

It hadn’t when she’d signed on, of course. Up until last August, it’d been her favorite project. She hadn’t had to lie when she’d beam through interviews or smile in press junkets, saying she’d been drawn to the project based on its premise, to the perfectly generic romantic comedy plot about a weary, overworked marketing executive who takes up with an agency that supplies lonely bachelorettes with steamy significant others. 

She, of course, had played the overworked exec, a flustered woman with a kind of frumpiness that can instantly get peeled away by a single makeover sequence, who finds herself in love with the kind, handsome man she hired to teach her how to date. 

Yes, she gets it. It isn’t a coincidence that Allison had chosen to spend years of her life making films about how false love might turn real. She’d just been in denial about it. 

Now, with hindsight, Allison understands the extent to which she’d been projecting. That she’d been hoping that, in the way that Hollywood so successfully markets the idea of fiction blurring into reality, the plot of her trilogy might come true. That Patrick might shake off his rumor, look at her clear-eyed, and love her anyway.

He didn’t. 

In fact, no one did.

Allison had come to Hollywood alone, and she’d been alone for months afterwards. It was, up until the stormy period after her divorce, the single most miserable time in her life.

She’d stand on set, waiting for one of her costars to walk up to her, cover the tattoo on her wrist with a warm hand, and tug her into the circle, and would find herself waiting for hours. She’d stare at the prettiest, most personable girl, and find herself drifting in a bright, starry fantasy world where they were best friends.

She’d lay there on the bland beige bedspread in her penthouse, because the pink floral one she’d had at home was too childish for serious actresses, and she’d stare at the chandelier in the ceiling, and choke up, night after night, waiting for the phone to ring, for someone glamorous to have somehow obtained her number. They would want her to come to a glittering party in the Hills, where she would wear a dress too short and tight for her age, sip alcohol she wasn’t old enough to drink, make eyes at men who weren’t technically allowed to flirt with her yet. 

She was alone.

Until, she’d swallowed her shame, strode over to her costar, and made it happen.

**(I heard a rumor you wanna be my friend.)**

Allison had always been a part of a pack, you see, she had always been at the _heart_ of it. She’d taken her place among them deeply seriously, had taken pride in it. She was the girl who’d knock her boys into line, who’d have them come running at the cry of her voice. She’d hand knives to Diego and order him to throw. She’d paint Klaus’s nails at lunchtime and he would feed her secrets. She’d play ball with Ben in the gallery. She’d toss amicable barbs back and forth with Five. She’d hold Luther’s heart in her hands and guard it like a half-starved wolf. 

She doesn’t know how to be alone. She isn’t good at it. She isn’t _meant_ for it, in the way she’d always thought Vanya was.

No, that's not right, is it? Allison recalls dimly, in the mistiest of her memories, Vanya being among them, one of seven special little ducklings all in a line, but then she'd gotten sick and split off from the pack and...

Vanya.

Yes, right. She’s here about Vanya.

Cheddar’s radio is buzzing, something about a hospital and a victim regaining consciousness, and…

Peabody. The radio said the word Peabody. 

Allison glances over Cheddar’s shoulder, at the site of the accident. 

He’s leaving, and she treads after him, reaching out as he climbs into his patrol car. 

_I’ll use it once,_ she thinks. _Just once._

**“I heard a…”**

Wait.

No, she doesn’t need this.

Allison bites down on her tongue, hard.

Being famous is its own kind of superpower, and Allison smiles brightly, drawing up a bright, shiny lie, and dealing it in his direction about how much she certainly would love to shadow an officer for a role.

And it falls flat.

Officer Cheddar dips his head at her, smiling, and rolls his window up in her face.

Allison gapes at him, watching him pull out into the street, and drive away.

* * *

Diego shuffles into the mansion, utterly drained from a long night awake, and feeling as though his heart’s been scraped raw. 

He’d spent the better part of last night dozing by a hospital bed in a crowded room full of coworkers and well-wishers, thinking over and over about reaching for Eudora’s hand, but never quite summoning the strength to do it. They’re not together, and they haven’t been for years, and they never would’ve been again, even before all of this. What’s more, Eudora is well-loved by many; it’s not like she’d have been alone. 

He felt a dozen pairs of eyes burning holes into him, the entire time he’d been there, the weight of words unsaid bearing down on them like a stormcloud. In the end, Diego had left, slinking out silently with his tail between his legs, with the soft rabbit’s foot she’d kept on her keychain caught between his fingers.

Beeman had given it to him; he’d caught him by the wrist, pulled him to the side in the hallway, and assured him that no one would come after him for this.

Diego doesn’t know why, but the news didn’t make him feel any better.

He rolls it between his fingers now, as he climbs the steps and lets himself in; the door’s still lockless, and he makes a note to call a smith to see about it, turning to peer at the hole in the wood, when he pauses.

There’s a note, stuck to the inside of the front door. 

It’s short, in his sister’s looping, overly formal script, the one she’d been trained to perfect for her autographs.

_Gone for Vanya. Jenkins cabin: 807 Jackpine Road, Jackpine Cove. A._

He reads it, and then starts running.

In the children’s hallway, he finds Five, pale and limping, walking alongside Klaus, tugging a tie-dye shirt over his head.

“Hey, did you hear? Turns out Dad killed himself,” says Klaus.

“Yeah. Whatever.” Diego skids into his bedroom. “Where’s Luther?”

“Haven’t seen him since breakfast.” 

“Oh, yeah, two days until the world ends, and he picks a _great_ time to drop off the grid.” 

“Shit,” Diego curses, clicking his harness into place as he heads out to them. 

“What?” Five frowns.

“Allison is in danger.”

He fills them in as they go, fielding outbursts of confusion from Klaus regarding the corpse in the attic (which, _gee Klaus, woulda been great if you’d’ve been there so we could’ve talked to the lady)_ and grumbles of “and you just… let Allison _go?”_ from Five, which, _yeah, thanks, man, glad to see you being real empathetic to my own personal crisis here._

They find Luther after an hour of looking, sitting morose and alone in the neighborhood Irish bar, a few blocks from the house. 

In the moment before they swing the heavy double doors in, Diego pauses.

There’s a missing persons’ flyer, taped to the dingy glass, and the face on it leaps out at Diego.

He tears it from the wall, showing it to Five.

“See? This woman? Helen Cho? First Chair of the St. Pluvium Chamber Orchestra?”

“Yeah?” Five, who’d hardly had time to process the corpse in the attic before he’d swooned, suddenly recalls it now. “Shit. That’s...”

“The body, yeah. And there was this poster, at Jenkins’ place, with Vanya’s name on it. She works for the same orchestra.”

Five roughly snatches the paper from Diego’s hand, and when the trio burst in after Luther, he and Klaus hang back, to look it over.

Luther, nursing a watery beer, is staring at it in detached disgust, wondering why on earth anyone drinks the stuff, and determines that maybe if he has enough of it, he’ll figure it out.

He’s trying to make sense of last night, of the blur of sensation and sound, of the odd, disconnected memories of feeling a mouth sloppily slip a tongue into his, a heated body pressing down on him. Of how, exactly, he’d woken up next to a furry-obsessed rave girl, who he had apparantly had sex with.

… He’d had sex, and he remembers just about none of it.

He takes a long gulp.

And promptly sputters it out, when he sees his brothers charging in. 

“Leave me alone,” he growls.

“Look,” Diego says, sliding into the greasy chair next to him, “Dad was wrong to lie to you, to all of us.”

“I did my time, alright. Four years up there, alone, waiting and watching because he said he needed me. Four years of nothing but soy paste and processed air, because I was naive enough to believe that dads shouldn’t lie to their kids. Joke’s on me.” 

Luther takes another swig from his mug. He simply has no idea how to live in a bitter, broken world, and so has decided to drown himself.

“I’m done. With all of it. With him, with you, with this family… You wanna save the world? Sure, go ahead.”

He’s waiting for Diego to take a slice at him.

And it would be so easy, to do so. Diego already has a dozen razor-sharp insults ready to throw, but he peers over at Five and Klaus, staring at the flyer and hissing sharp words among themselves, and realizes that it would simply not be right to do so.

“You want to turn your back on me, the guys, that’s fine. But Allison deserves better than that.”

“Allison?” Luther perks his head up, like a dog at the sound of his owner’s voice. 

There we go. Luther’s back.

“Yeah, so apparently, Vanya’s boyfriend is a convicted murderer. With a fresh body in his house.”

“So… Where’s Allison now?” Luther glances over at their brothers, then towards the door, like Allison’ll dip her head in to hiss at them to hurry up.

“That’s the thing. She decided to go after them. Alone.”

“You should have _led_ with that!” Luther slams his mug down onto the table, springs up, and rushes out. With the speed at which he flies through the door, he rips it right off its hinges, sending it flying into the street. 

The four of them pile into Diego’s car, and settle in for a long, tense drive to Jackpine. 

* * *

Vanya peers out the window warily, at the dreary sky, fretting over how the clouds have only grown darker as the day’s worn on, now appearing purple-green as a bruise. 

She hopes that if the storm comes at all, it’s over by the morning. It’d be awful to have to brave the drive back through a supercell. 

She voices her concern to Leonard, who scowls. He’s been sullen, since they drove back from the preserve.

“Go back?” he says, like he can’t quite believe what she’d said.

Oh, right, how stupid of her.

“I mean, _after_ we get your eye fitted.”

He doesn’t seem to get it.

“I have my concert,” she explains. “Tomorrow night.”

He blinks.

Then, a switch flips in his head, and he smiles, running a hand over hers.

“Right, yes. The concert.”

They don’t speak for a while after that. Vanya picks at her sandwich, feeling quite certain that if she were to eat it, she’d throw it right back up. She feels more than a little bit selfish, for having brought up her concert; he couldn’t have planned to lose an eye, after all. Her potential need to stand in for first chair, which seems more and more likely to be the case now, is simply less important. 

“Do you realize what you accomplished today?” he asks, taking note of her gloomy look, “You accessed the power you didn’t even realize you had. You controlled it, you let it fade away _safely.”_

The crack of the branch resounds in her memories, and she flinches a bit.

“Almost safely.”

“I just hope that you realize now that despite what your family said to you all these years, they’re wrong. You _are_ special.”

Vanya nods.

“You know, what I _really_ need to do is practice.”

His face lights up, and she realizes he’s misunderstood her.

“My violin, I mean. The concert’s _tomorrow.”_

“Oh.” He’s scowling again.

“What?”

Leonard huffs. “We had a _breakthrough_ today, Vanya. This thing that’s happening to you? It’s _important,_ and you can’t diminish it just because you’re still caught up in what your family thinks--”

“Well, my music’s important too.” 

“You’re right, of course,” he says, a little stilted. It’s probably just his pain starting up again, “Yeah, go practice.” 

Vanya smiles, a little nervously, and gives him a quick kiss on the forehead, before retrieving her violin and heading out to the porch.

She likes it out here, finding it very easy to stand in the shade for hours, smelling the thick aroma of the pine around her as she plays. Just as she'd played in her audition, the music spills forth from her without a single sour note. She's content to let her worries be carried away by the song, watching the wind pick up among the trees across the pond, and the solo that she'd only just been assigned comes to her as though she'd known it her entire life. 

Eventually, she comes to a stop, when her fingers are aching and her stomach's growling, and there's a prickling in the back of her mind, a need to talk to Leonard, to be sure he understood that she hadn't meant to diminish his pain with her talk of the concert.

Vanya strides in, and frowns.

He's gone. 

"Leonard?"

No answer.

The door slams behind her, so hard it seems to shake the cabin walls. The wind's picking up outside, and the storm seems like it's rolling in. For a moment, Vanya had stupidly thought that it might've been Leonard, slamming the door to frighten her.

 _No,_ she thinks then. _He wouldn't do that. He just isn't answering me._

Vanya sets down her violin, and makes a loop around the house, checking in each room, calling for him.

But he's nowhere. 

Vanya passes by the window, the one facing the driveway, and pauses. 

His truck is gone. He'd gone somewhere, without her.

 _He must've been mad,_ she realizes, her heart slamming in her chest. _He was mad at me, for being so selfish, and I should've noticed. But I was too caught up in myself, and I should've been taking care of him._

Vanya pauses, staring at her face, pale and frightened, in the narrow, dusty mirror on the dark mantle. Looking into her own eyes, she suddenly finds her breathing has slipped away from her. She feels trapped.

She _is_ trapped. She will try the door and find it stuck fast, and she will be trapped here, in this tiny cabin, apart from everyone and everything, and she will be trapped in here for a month as she slowly starves to death, the silly, insolent little girl who had driven everyone away because she could not control herself. She's trapped and alone and Leonard has run out on her and he'll never come back and--

Vanya's eyes rest on her violin.

Good. Yes, she can do this. She can take her violin, and practice with it, the same way she always does whenever she's nervous or confused. She cannot control the world, and she cannot control Leonard, but she can control her music. And maybe that is the key. Maybe, if she can compromise, and learn her power through her music, Leonard will realize how caring she is, how clever, and he will return to her, and all will be forgiven. 

She takes it into her hands, assumes the position, draws in a deep, steadying breath, and concentrates, letting all the other sounds drop away, so she can focus only on her music, only on the solo she will perform tomorrow night. 

She takes that song, and takes it into herself, letting it gather inside of her and build like the reverberation of a tuning fork, until she's ready to release it.

And she does. 

Vanya's power is not a hammer, when she allows it out of her, nor a wave. It leaves her steadily, making the windows clatter open and the paintings on the walls shiver, taking her hair into its grasp and playing with it sweetly. Outside, the pond begins to quiver, wide arcs of water tracing their way across like a... ripple.

She's done it. She's made a ripple. 

_I can do this,_ she realizes. _I can do this._

* * *

Allison, for lack of anything to smoke, has taken to desperate measures: she is now chewing a used cigarette, marring it with berry-tinted lip gloss and bite marks. 

At the glare of a particularly anal nurse, she spits her butt out on the ground, and takes care to crush it beneath her heeled boot as she walks into the hospital after Sergeant Cheddar. 

After he’d driven off, Allison had leapt into her car and followed him.

Now, at the hospital, she is keeping just enough distance behind him to be able to duck out of sight, and so far, no one’s questioned her presence; she simply waves her blue binder, and nods crisply at any passing doctor or nurse who second-glances her. Act like you belong, and you will belong.

Her feet are aching; her boots are most definitely _not_ made for this much walking. Thank God she isn’t wearing her stilettos.

But it’s a welcome pain, one that distracts from everything.

Allison hates the hospital. Something about it, about the flashing of fluorescents and the metallic screech of a gurney and the rattling of medication on a tray being carried by a nurse passing Allison by makes her skin crawl.

She leans against a sterile white wall, once Cheddar’s dipped into a doorway.

The recovery room across from the one Allison is taking interest in is empty. All the lights are switched off, and there’s nothing in that dark space but a small, sterile bed. The sight of it makes Allison’s throat tickle from discomfort, and she moves to cover her mouth, to cough quietly. She tugs up the binder and opens it, to appear busy, to avoid having to look at the room.

And is greeted with the solemn face of her sister, from the back of her book jacket, the one Allison snatched on her way out so she might have a reference to wave at people when she asks about Vanya.

Inside the room she’s interested in, Cheddar’s speaking to the patient, who according to the placard outside his door, is one Mr. Luntz. 

Luntz, she has concluded, was involved in whatever accident Jenkins was in, an accident that had claimed two other lives. 

Wait, no: it _wasn’t_ an accident.

“This guy hired us to start a fight,” Luntz wheezes, “He wanted us to rough him up in front of his girlfriend. He paid real good up front. We got drunk, got a little too far. Started to hassle the girl too, but then all hell broke loose.” 

Allison peeks quickly around the doorframe, and her eyes bulge at the mass of mottled bruises coating the man’s face, at how both his eyes are swollen shut.

For a moment, she imagines Vanya in his place.

She ducks back. 

_Alright,_ Allison orders herself, _stay calm, and work your way through this._

So she does: She knows they were here in town last night. That they’d gone to that restaurant, likely for dinner, and had been attacked in the parking lot. That Jenkins and Vanya got into a fight, and that the men involved got hurt. Judging by the injuries Luntz has sustained, Allison assumes they’d been hit by a car, maybe Jenkins’s. 

It’s a start, and--

A nurse glides right past Allison, and orders Cheddar out so Luntz can be taken for an x-ray. 

Allison starts, and hurries around the nearest corner to avoid him, and then the next, and the next, feeding herself into the labyrinth of identical-looking hallways, until she finds herself utterly turned around, and wastes a solid fifteen minutes working her way back to the patient rooms.

She finds her way back, though, and passes the nurse’s station.

And pauses. There, scratching away at some paperwork, is the nurse who’d passed her earlier, who’d attended to Luntz.

“Do you recognize this woman?” Allison prompts, digging the crumpled book jacket out of her binder, and handing it to the nurse.

She frowns, tilting her head, then: “She left with Mr. Peabody.”

“Mr. Peabody was _here?”_

“Yes, he had himself voluntarily discharged this morning.” 

This morning.

As in, had Allison waited a few minutes longer, she might’ve found Vanya hours ago.

Allison hisses a curse to herself, and wheels around to make for her car.

* * *

Allison returns to the Jenkins cabin with the last blue stain of dusk. 

Her car keeps drifting into the side of the road, brushing up against the trees on either side of it. Above her and around her, the trees are swaying rhythmically, their leaves rustling loose and showering down on her, as though she were in the depths of autumn. 

The air, Allison realizes, seems to be shimmering in front of her.

Allison parks at the edge of the driveway, right where it meets the road, and leaps out, barely noting that there isn’t a car in the driveway at all. She’s too busy staring around her in awe.

There’s a vortex, forming around her, the wind shaking the trees in a great circle, with the cabin at its epicenter. Allison feels the strange, electrical caress of what she can only guess is the wind, tracing the planes of her body and rustling her hair and jacket. 

_The storm is here,_ she thinks, and then glances up, confused, at the wide stretch of deep sapphire sky around the cabin.

She rounds the corner and... 

And the cabin, she realizes, is the epicenter of this strange event. The building is lit up and breathing, like a living creature, the wood and metal and glass of its walls and windows rising and falling to a strange, internal rhythm that reminds Allison of a heartbeat.

Inside, she can hear the shrill, excitable dread shivering from the strings of a lone violin, pricking the hair on Allison’s neck to stand on end.

It’s Vanya. She’s inside. She’s alive.

Allison is racing up the porch, and skids to a halt when she catches a glimpse of her in the window.

The cabin isn’t the epicenter.

 _Vanya_ is.

Vanya is making the world tremble, and she is doing with her violin. 

Which means… Vanya has powers.

Allison claps a hand over her mouth.

She remembers now. 

In fact, she’s been remembering for hours; over the course of the day, she’s been gathering the pieces to a long-forgotten puzzle, and now she understands all at once what the picture she’s assembling _is._

The mist has blown away from the foggiest of her memories, and she can see what’s behind that dark cloud of unease that’d hung between the two of them since they were children, a cloud that’d been created by the ghost of a memory hidden deep in their collective subconscious, of a terrible sin one sister had committed against the other a thousand years ago, near the beginning of time.

The metallic squealing of the hinges on a door in the basement. The jagged-toothed belly of the monster, that her father had led her into. The harsh fluorescent flicker, the bare bed in the center of it all. The clatter of pills, the hot breath of her father in her ear, urging her to _get it done._

Vanya’s eyes, turning to milky glass.

_I did it to you, didn’t I?_

Allison’s eyes are filling with tears, and she wipes them away quickly, clearing her throat.

There’s no time. 

They can talk about this later, when they’re away from here, when they’re safe.

Allison tries the door, find it’s unlocked, and enters.

“Vanya.”

Vanya turns, and stops playing. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to find you. Are you okay?”

“Yeah?” Vanya blinks in confusion. 

She’s stopped playing, but the curtains are still trembling, and above them, the chandelier is rocking unsteadily back and forth. 

It’s still so unbelievable. Allison finds herself whispering, “What…”

“I did that,” Vanya’s saying, a little proud, a little nervous, a little combative, “With my powers. Turns out I’ve had them all this time. It’s _weird,_ huh?” 

“I know.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

Vanya blinks, and frowns. “What?”

“Listen, it doesn’t matter. Can we do this in the car?”

Allison peers past Vanya, into the shadowed kitchen, into the narrow hall leading to what she assumes are a set of small bedrooms. 

“Why?”

“You’re not going to want to hear it.”

“Well, that’s never stopped you before,” Vanya replies sourly. 

Allison flinches, and the words spill out of her, far sharper than she’d intended them to be, the act of some small, vicious part of her that wants to lash out and shock her sister, to punish her for making her feel so horrible for even a split second: “Vanya, your boyfriend’s a murderer.”

Vanya stares at her, as though her hair had suddenly turned purple.

“He’s using a fake name. _Leonard Peabody?_ His real name is _Harold Jenkins.”_

Vanya’s shaking her head, slowly, in utter disbelief. 

“He killed his father when he was thirteen years old,” says Allison, disquieted by the soft flickering wish, deep within her own subconscious, that _she_ had killed her father when she was thirteen years old. She’s eager to look away from that thought, to pretend it isn’t hers.

Vanya sighs, rolling her eyes, thinking of Allison bursting into her apartment, days earlier, to proclaim that she’d begun stalking her boyfriend. Some nerve she has, driving all the way out here just to keep trying to drive a wedge between them. “Allison, this is _insane.”_

“But far more importantly,” Allison says, “There’s a dead woman in his attic.”

“What.”

“Five and Diego and I went to his house--”

“Well, what the hell were you _doing_ there?”

“--And we found a corpse. Wrapped in plastic. In his attic. The body was maybe a few days old? And with it, there was a _violin case.”_

Vanya goes white, blinking slowly, moving to sit, slowly on a chair in the living room. 

She knows exactly who she's talking about. She doesn't know how Allison could've known, unless...

“And he had all these pictures of us, of the Academy, with our eyes gouged out. He has a grudge against us, I’ll bet.”

Vanya’s staring down at her violin, fingering her bow shakily.

Allison drops to her knees in supplication, leaning in towards her sister and taking her narrow wrist between her palms. 

_“Think_ about it Vanya, why do you _think_ he’s dating you?”

Vanya recoils, snatching her hand away. 

“Because he likes me? Because he wants me? I know it might be _difficult_ for you to imagine, that someone might want me.”

“No, I…” Allison can’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t know what to say.

Vanya looks up to Allison, murmuring “I love him,” like she’s ashamed to say it aloud, like she’s ashamed to have fallen so hard and fast.

Allison glances over her shoulder, towards the door.

He’s going to come back. His headlights will be swinging around the corner any second now, and Vanya’s just _sitting_ here, and...

“The fact is, Vanya, I love you--”

Vanya laughs, once, sharp and high and haggish.

“--And I want to be _here_ for you. Now, look, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now, but--”

“Oh,” Vanya sighs, her face crumpling as the tears start spilling out, “It just doesn’t make any _sense._ Leonard and… and this _power…_ I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.” 

Allison flinches.

That’s it. She doesn’t believe her about Leonard, but maybe if she _tells_ her. Maybe if she comes clean, right now, and blows away that cloud of distrust between them, then she’ll come.

Allison draws in a deep breath. 

“Vanya… do you remember, when we were four? When Dad told us you were sick, and you had to be isolated?” 

Vanya blinks, nodding slowly, drawing deep into her own well of memories, into the murkiest ones at the very bottom. 

She peers over, at the mirror on the mantle, and _y_ _es,_ she remembers. She remembers the thin, rectangular window full of light, and the dark, dark space around it, and the deadness of the air. 

“Yeah, I…”

“We were so young, none of us knew to question it.”

Vanya frowns.

“What do you mean, I wasn’t there because I was sick?”

“Did you _feel_ sick?”

“No? I… I don’t know? I _must’ve_ been. Everything was so _loud._ I could hear the blood in my ears, and my heart beat so loud and it scared me so much. And besides, I had to start taking medicine after that, to make sure I wouldn’t get so sick again. I _must've_ been sick.” 

“He didn’t let us see you for about a month. But then he took me aside, and brought me to visit you.”

Vanya frowns, recalling the blurred shapes that would pass in front of the window, shapes that resolve themselves as Dad’s and Mom’s and Pogo’s and… and Allison’s.

“And then he asked me… to do something I… I never understood until now. He made me an accomplice.”

Vanya gets it.

“What did you say?”

**(I heard a rumor that you think you’re just ordinary.)**

Allison clamps up, suddenly finding herself unable to look at Vanya at all. Her mouth is full of ash, and she's choking on it.

“Allison. _What did you say?”_

Allison swallows thickly, then leans in, and whispers everything but the first four words into her ear.

Vanya takes the words and turns them over and over in her mind, breaks them down into their components and scrutinizes them for what they are and what they’ve done to her. 

_Think._ As in, Allison couldn’t rumor her powers away entirely, because it would’ve been impossible to do so. But what she could do was rumor her _knowledge_ of them away, and leave them folded away inside of her.

 _Just._ As in, no matter how hard Vanya may ever try, she’d never be able to surpass it.

 _Ordinary._ As in, not extraordinary. As in, powerless, in _all_ senses of the word.

 _I never had a chance, did I?_ Vanya realizes. _I could have never had powers. I could have never gotten good at anything. I could have never made friends, or fallen in love, or done anything great or important, no matter how hard I tried or how much I practiced, because you stopped me from ever getting there._

Vanya hasn’t been truly happy in years, and she’s always wondered why.

Now she knows. Now she understands.

 _“You_ did this to me?”

“I… I didn’t realize,” Allison says softly.

“You _knew_ this whole time?” Vanya springs up. “That I had _powers?”_

“ _No!”_ Allison leaps up after her. “No! It was so long ago, and I only just remembered it today, when I saw it all, and when I was little, you know I didn’t understand what it meant--”

“You know, I get it now. _This_ is why you never wanted me around!”

Vanya’s mind is racing away from her. Her family hates her, yes they _do_ and here is proof. “You couldn’t risk me threatening your place in the house, your dominance? You couldn’t handle the idea that Dad might find _me_ special?”

“Oh, you _are_ special, with or without powers!”

_“Don’t say that!”_

“Come on now, we have a chance to _start over!”_

Allison doesn’t know who started it, but now they’re both screaming. 

“You _destroyed my life,_ and you just wanna _move on?”_

“Yes! Yes! _Exactly!_ It’s all out in the open now. We’re both free! We can leave this behind! Let’s do that, let’s move on!”

“I’m moving on. Not with you, with Leonard.”

“With Harold, you mean.”

“With _Leonard._ The only person who has _ever_ loved me for me.”

Allison scoffs. She can’t stop herself; the meanness just keeps spilling from her. 

“God, how _stupid_ are you? Am I _really_ that unbelievable, or are you just _desperate?”_

 _“What?_ That’s not _fair._ You’re not being--”

“Oh, _I’m_ not being fair? What about _you?_ You know, I drove _all night_ to get here? I missed my flight because of _you._ I won’t get to see my _daughter_ because of _you!_ Now the least you can do is _come with me_ and get in the goddamn car, and let me take you--”

“Oh, come on, Allison, we both know you don’t care _that_ much.”

Vanya may as well have reached across the room and slapped her.

“Don’t you fucking say that. Don’t you _dare.”_

“Why not? We’re all thinking it, aren’t we? You keep saying you have to get back to your kid, but you’ve been sticking around town for a week. You’ve been fucking with my life for days, and for _what?”_

Vanya’s spitting now, she’s so angry.

“You know what I think?” she asks, suddenly ice cold.

“What? What _do_ you think?”

“I think you’re afraid of me. I think you’re afraid of me being happy. I think you can’t _stand_ it if someone’s happy and you’re not, so you have to destroy it.”

Allison swallows. “Vanya, that’s _absurd.”_

Vanya’s fingers are white-knuckle tight around her bow.

“Yeah? Then look me in the eye, and tell me you’re not threatened right now.”

Allison hears the chattering of the wind chimes, the whispering of the trees. She sees the curtains flap, and the furniture pick up and quiver. She feels the cabin quake beneath her feet, feels her own _bones_ begin to vibrate. 

And she still can’t look up and rest her eyes on Vanya’s face.

Instead, she rests them on the door, hanging ajar and swinging.

“I don’t wanna argue with you,” she says, filling her voice with as much bluster as she can.

 _There it is,_ Vanya thinks furiously.

“Then go.”

“I’m only trying to help you--”

“I don’t _want_ your help!” 

“Vanya, I love you.”

“Stop saying that!”

A change has come over Vanya, jerking her limbs grotesquely and twisting her face into a ferocious snarl. 

_And her eyes..._

Allison is looking at Vanya, and realizes with a start that she doesn’t recognize her anymore. 

“Are… you okay?”

_“I said GO!”_

Above her, the chandelier shatters, sending sparks and shooting stars of glass streaming down to slice at Allison’s face.

Allison yelps, throwing her hands up to protect her face, the fear she’d felt five days ago in the mansion when the ceiling had come crashing down on her roiling up from within her to make her whole body tremble.

Allison doesn’t know what to _do_ to make her calm down and listen and...

It spills out of her, so quick she can’t even think, the flex of an overused muscle.

**“I heard a rumor that--”**

It's the worst thing she could have done in that moment.

The world stains white, then red.

And in the middle of it all, there's Vanya, pale as a ghost, eyes turned to milky glass from the effects of Allison’s enchantment, mouth red and screaming, hunched over and twisted up in a rage so cold and bright it takes Allison’s breath away, a flash of white arcing from her hands.

Allison feels something hot spilling down her chest, and blinks slowly. Her mouth is full of blood, and she's choking on it.

She doesn’t feel the pain, so much as she remembers it.

The white blade of energy, tearing through muscle and vein, searing into her throat with white-bright anger.

Vanya’s staring at her, her mouth dropping wide open, eyes bulging wider. Her bow clatters to the floor, and Allison sees the horsehair is bright red and dripping.

Oh. She gets it now.

Allison is falling, falling, falling, down to the floor, and Vanya is falling with her.

Their hands are meeting, over Allison’s throat, fingers tangling together as they try to staunch the flow of the blood that’s pulsing from her, spilling everywhere.

When Allison’s head knocks against the floor, it hits her: _I’m dying._

She opens her mouth, and it gapes in a soundless scream, spraying flecks of blood everywhere.

Already, her vision swimming and ebbing black at the edges. 

The moments last for years.

Vanya is sobbing above her, hot tears dripping down and falling on Allison’s face. She’s saying something, but it’s hard to hear anything over the wet sluicing of her own blood.

 _I’m sorry,_ she thinks Vanya’s saying. _I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry..._

Allison gets it: She’d never meant to hurt Allison herself, only to slice through the path of the rumor before it could reach her. 

The door’s opened, behind her.

Allison stares, over Vanya’s shoulder, at the unsympathetic face of Harold Jenkins.

He’s smiling, awash with pleasure, peering down at the very Hargreeves who’d first rejected him as a boy, the thorn in his side that’d bothered him all week, who’d been pried out by his protegee.

And here, he was thinking that Vanya might be too weak to break free from her family. He was coming back, thinking he’d have to persuade her to stay.

How _wrong_ he thinks he is for doubting her. He’s swelling with terrible pride, crowing in his mind: _look at what she’s done all on her own_.

Allison lays, clinging to life, her hands clutched tightly over her throat, watching faintly as Jenkins snatches Vanya’s violin and bow and hurriedly stuffs them into their case, then catches Vanya by the shoulder and wrenches her roughly up and away.

Vanya is screaming, as she’s pulled out through the door and into the night, but once the chill of the air hits her, a new sort of terror possesses her, one that seeps into her limbs and makes her lose all will to fight her way back to her sister; deep down, a small, terrible part of her that wants to turn and flee wins out, and she allows him to herd her into his truck with little resistance.

And then Allison is alone.

She is alone, on the living room floor of the Jenkins cabin, bleeding out and hours away from anyone who might help her, and she is determined to live, for as many seconds or minutes or hours or days as she can. So she keeps herself as still as humanly possible, in the hopes that it will slow the spill of her blood, in the hopes that someone might find her in time. 

She’s ebbing in and out of consciousness. She cannot recall when she loses it, only that when she is awake, she is alone, then alone, then alone, then…

Then, the green flash of the door slamming open.

Then, the faces of her brothers, swimming above her, their cries of fear and anger and shock so far away that she can only hear their echoes, a thousand miles away and fading fast. She reaches out to those echoes, clutches them in her blood-slick hands, and holds fast to them, so they might keep her from slipping away.


	6. turn my heart away

They’re back at his house, sometime after midnight, and Vanya stopped feeling anything at all when she finally cried herself empty halfway through the drive back. She spent the rest of the time on the road staring at the dashboard, seeing nothing at all.

Vanya feels the uncanny sensation of being somewhere outside her body, her mind tied to it like a kite on a string, and she is watching herself shuffle in the back door after Leonard. 

_His name is Leonard,_ she keeps telling herself, unsure of why she keeps repeating it, _that is his name, that is the name he gave to me, and that is the name he calls himself by, his name is Leonard..._

It’s cold tonight, she knows, vaguely, but she can’t feel it at all. The fog she’d kicking through on the way to the door seems to have taken up residence in her head.

“We’re safe here, for a bit,” he says, from somewhere far away, “Can’t stay long.”

He sets her case down on the kitchen counter, and turns to regard her as she comes to an uncertain halt in the doorway. She isn’t sure where to go, what to do, has utterly shut down.

She waits, as he evaluates her, taking her stiff, still hands into his own and examining the thick crust of dried blood that’s coated them. 

She needs a bath, he says, and she agrees, from somewhere deep within herself, begins walking towards the stairs, taking one step and then the next. 

She pauses.

There are stars, scattered across the floor of the front hall, glittering sharply, and her shoes crunch on them.

Behind her, Leonard curses, and he hurries her closer to the wall, away from them.

“What’s that,” she murmurs, “What’s…”

“They were _here,”_ he is saying over her, and she’s pretty sure it’s to himself, “That’s how they found us.”

He firmly guides her up the stairs, down the hall to the bathroom, and begins peeling her clothes, stiff and crusty with blood, off of her, like she’s a small child too young to undress herself. They crunch, as she steps out of them.

She stands, naked, arms still at her sides, as he fills the bathtub, and sits when he tells her to, drawing her thin knees up to her chest and tracing bloody splotches across them when her palms run over them in small circles. 

Vanya stares down at her feet, at the water around them, watching it turn pinkish, feeling Leonard’s hands on her distantly, as he runs a washcloth along the smears of blood on her neck, her chest, her arms and hands.

“Your family will be coming for us soon,” Leonard’s voice is so quiet, yet somehow she can hear him perfectly, “But you don’t have to worry; we’re a team now. We have to take the fight to them.” 

Somewhere deep in the dense fog in her brain, it occurs to Vanya, like the distant ringing of a bell: _Well, that doesn’t make sense._

“Why would they be coming for me?” she murmurs, resting her head on her crossed arms. She’s so tired.

 _“Vanya,”_ He smiles at her, indulgently, “You killed Allison.”

_I didn’t mean to._

“No, I…” Vanya frowns, “I lost control. Everything just happened so fast.”

The ends of Vanya’s hair are trailing in the water, floating like strange dark sea creatures.

“Oh, it’s not your fault, you were protecting yourself,” He’s now up to her wrists, speaking softly, the way a person might talk to a beloved pet about to be euthanized, “That’s not how _they’ll_ see it.”

Light pierces through the fog in Vanya’s mind.

“No,” Vanya lifts her head, nodding certainly, shaking loose of his attempts to worm into her psyche, “I’ll explain it to them. I just need to get to them, and I need to explain it to them.”

They’ll understand. They may treat her badly, but they don’t mean to cause any harm; her siblings are good people, and all she has to do is talk to them.

Leonard sighs, tugging her wrists to him, “No, they want to _hurt_ you. I’m the only one on your side, who understands just how _special_ you truly are. I knew it the first time I saw you, I always knew it, but they never did, and you know that.”

Special. The word hits her like a white-hot knife to the gut, makes her go rigid.

“Say it.”

“I can’t.” 

“Say it for _me.”_ His hand tightens on her wrist, not enough to hurt, just enough to let her know he will not let go if she pulls away.

“I’m special.”

“Good. Now say it again.”

“I’m special,” she sighs. 

She’s _finally_ special, and she hates it.

He doesn’t ask her to talk after that, allows her to finish bathing in silence, to shrug on his soft blue Windbreaker and head downstairs to the kitchen for a drink.

She isn’t really thirsty; she just needs to be alone for a minute. She can’t relax around him, feeling like a rubber band stretched far too thin.

Downstairs, she isn’t any better. In Leonard’s absence, in the silence he’s left, she can hear Allison’s voice, the last words she’ll ever speak, rattling around on the inside of her skull, boring into her. She can hear her own voice, high and sharp and vicious in a way she’s never heard it, the fleshy _slice_ of her sister’s throat tearing--

Vanya leaps out of her chair and makes a run for the kitchen sink.

She clasps the edge, hanging over it, drawing in quick, ragged gasps as her stomach settles. Thankfully, she gets there in time to keep herself from vomiting.

Then, she tugs at the faucet handle, pools icy water in her hands, and smears it over her face. The shock of the cold feels good, shaking loose some of that fog as it trickles down her neck, clings to her hair and shirt and the cuffs of her sleeves. 

Vanya sighs heavily, reaching for the washcloth on the counter, under Leonard’s messenger bag, and winces as the bag slides loose, hitting the floor and spilling out odds and ends.

She hopes nothing important is in it, nothing breakable, she’d _hate_ for him to get mad at her right now. Vanya drops to her knees and starts hurriedly shoving pencils and keys and loose candies back into the pockets. His bag is straining at the seams, filled to the brim with notebooks and novels, cheap ones mostly, except for a...

A red leather volume, large and thick and worn through at the edges, with a pair of scratched-out initials embossed into the spine.

She’s seen it before.

Vanya frowns, tugging it out and… 

Recognizes the pattern on the cover, the _R. H._ embossed in gold leaf. The umbrella, stamped on the inner page, the exact same umbrella stamped on each and every one of her siblings’ left forearms. 

_What._

Vanya flips it open, staring in disbelief at a familiar looping scrawl, covering the pages.

It’s her father’s journal, the one she’d never been allowed to touch, so much as read, the one that he keeps notes on her siblings’ progress in.

_What’s he doing with..._

One of the pages has her name on it.

Vanya stares at the words. 

`The power she exhibits thus far appears to be unlimited, uncontrollable and dangerous. It is for the greater good that her abilities should remain a secret. ` ``

`Methods of limiting her power:`

  * `Mood altering medication to keep her sedated`
  * `Permanent alteration (#00.03)`



Her breaths are coming fast and sharp.

He knew. Her father knew. 

And _Leonard..._

“Vanya?” He’s at the front door. “Come on, let’s get going.”

_Going, right I am meant to be going…_

She is meant to be going to the house, to fight her family.

Now, she understands why. The mist over her mind vanishes all at once, as if it’d been gusted away by a powerful wind, and she can see _everything_ so clearly now. 

He steps away from the door, now has a clear line of sight to the kitchen, and sees her. “Vanya, I can explain.”

She starts towards him, slowly, the book open in her palms, like a shield over her midsection. “You’ve been manipulating me, all this time.”

“No,” He waves a finger. “That's not true. I’m only trying to protect you.”

“From who?”

“From your family, _they’re_ the ones trying to hurt you.” 

Vanya swallows. 

“It’s right there in that journal,” he says, stepping into the living room, speaking low and soft, as one might to a cornered wild animal, about her father, how he feared her, how he put her on those pills to keep her suppressed, that he’d never trusted her to be strong enough to control her powers…

He’s right, she thinks, just for a second, before she blinks the thought away.

Leonard’s hands find her forearms, settling there and holding her firmly. 

“But I’ve never been afraid of you. I _embraced_ you. I’m the only one who ever accepted you for who you are. Your brothers, and your sister? They went along with him every step of the day.”

 _Bullshit,_ she thinks, feeling her eyes start to burn. _You’ve been lying to me all week._

She remembers now, what Allison had told her. 

“Who’s Harold Jenkins?” Her voice is quiet, and even. 

For a moment, she sees the mask lift on Leonard, sees his face collapse and twist with a pain that she knows is real. “Someone like us. A lonely boy. An outsider, whose family was cruel to him. All he ever wanted was to be heard, to be loved.”

If nothing else, she knows that this is the truth, the only one he's ever told her. And he’s wielding it against her, using his pain as a weapon.

“Listen,” he says, drawing uncomfortably close to her face, “I’m not the one who tried to kill you.”

 _No,_ she realizes, _but you killed someone else. Allison was right, so you killed someone else, and she’s upstairs in the attic, right now, and I--_

“I have to go,” Vanya says, moving to pull away from him and he jostles her roughly back into place, is now squeezing her with a bruising grip.

“Vanya, we’re in danger. They’ve seen you in action, they know what you’re capable of, and they’ll come for us.”

He’s a broken record, she realizes. 

_Liar,_ she thinks, _you’re lying, you’ve been lying about so much; how can I believe you, now?_

“No, they’ll listen to me.”

“Oh, they never will! They want you to feel small, but don’t you see, _they’re_ the small ones next to you. Compared to them, you’re a god!” He’s practically spitting now, and she’s fairly certain that he isn’t talking about her anymore.

“Vanya,” he’s tugged the book out of her hands, clutches it to his chest and makes an awful, plaintive sound, “You _need_ me.”

No. No she _doesn’t._ She doesn’t at _all._

“What I _need_ is my family,” Vanya snaps, tearing loose from his grip. 

She wants to go home. 

“I didn’t mean to kill Allison, and I _love_ her. And I love _them.”_

He looks down at her, a shadow passing over his face. He’s looking at her like she’s a nuisance, a noisy child who ought to shut up and be quiet, and she wants to reach out and punch him, but she keeps her fists clenched tight at her sides.

“Your father was right,” he sighs, turning his back to her and walking casually towards the dining room. “You’re not strong enough. He knew it. And now I know it.”

Vanya glares at him. 

And Leonard knows he’ll have to do something, to get her back into line.

He knows immediately what to do. Vanya _needs_ him, you see, there’s no one in the world who can help her with her powers the way he can.

So, he draws the book up into his hands, and smacks it roughly, snapping, “You’re weak! You’re pathetic!”

He watches her face crumple, the tears spilling from her eyes fall faster, as she pleads for him to stop.

 _This is good,_ he thinks; if Vanya is upset, her powers will awaken, and she will cling to the clattering of the book, use it to implode the furniture around them. Already, the lamps around him are trembling, sending scattered shadows across the walls.

_Let her blow up, and I will be here to bring her down, and she will know how much she needs me then._

“Look at you, you’re nothing!”

Something shifts in Vanya; she goes rigid, shrieks back at him, like she’s four years old and caught in the throes of a tantrum. 

She’s angry. She’s _so_ angry and she doesn’t know where it’s coming from.

“You’re just _ordinary!”_

She can feel it, that fury, rising in her hot and fast, and she claps her hands over her ears, knowing she won’t be able to stop it.

They’re screaming at each other now, back and forth, her crying for him to stop, and him continuing, _ordinary, ordinary, ordinary,_ it’s all she _hears._

It’s enough. She’s had enough.

Vanya sets her jaw firmly, feeling everything in her go cold and still. Her rage is so still and quiet that it can be mistaken for calm, as she lifts her shoulders high, and the air itself trembles before her.

She’ll show him ordinary.

The sound feeds into itself: the rapping of a hand against leather, the glassy rattle of a dozen lamps quivering, the clatter of doors and bookshelves and the silvery tinkle of a line of antique silverware shivering. All of it, she reaches out to, all of it, she gathers into herself, all of it, she bears down on him now like the percussive blast she’d delivered on a line of crystal glasses decades ago.

And she lifts him, clean off the ground, watching his face go pale, listening to his taunts trail off into a whimper.

Leonard had expected Vanya to use her powers. He hadn’t expected her to have such delicate control of them. And, in all of his hubris, Leonard had never once assumed that she’ll turn them on _him._

It isn’t enough, just to hold him. She wants him to be afraid, before he dies.

Behind him, Vanya goes white in the face from her efforts, as she reaches for the plates and picture frames and odds and ends and scattered throughout the room, and her powers oblige, shattering them off the walls and churning them into a cyclone of glass, porcelain, wood and metal. 

It seems, Vanya notes sourly, that Leonard has one final lesson to teach her.

Her power, it appears, is so much _more_ than just a hammer of energy; it’s a surgical knife, cutting precisely. She commands a wave of power, but when the sound she draws that power from stems from a source as focused and steady as the beating of a hand against a book, that wave is made up of a thousand hands, capable of incredibly delicate and complex movements. It can be as sharp as a knife, or as gentle as a lover’s hand, if she so desires it to be.

 _I can do so much with it,_ she thinks, and knows _exactly_ what she’ll use it for first.

Her cyclone is drawing in tools from as far away as the kitchen, and the entirety of Leonard’s knife block is slashing dangerously through the air, like a flock of strange, sharp birds. 

Vanya gathers each and every one of the sharp objects under her command, the knives, the meat forks, the scissors, and drives them at once into Leonard’s chest.

He’s screaming, but she doesn’t react. She isn’t even crying anymore. She isn’t confused, she isn’t acting on impulse. She knows exactly what she’s doing. This is the first time she has ever used her powers, and they have responded to her _perfectly._

She’s going home, and he won’t stop her.

His head lolls forward, and she knows she’s done enough, sending him flying dismissively backwards, buckling into the dining table, which shatters below him as if it’d been made of glass.

Vanya stares down at him for a moment, still rooted in place. She has to be sure he’s dead, that he won’t come crawling after her, or her family.

He is. 

So Vanya calmly lets go of her powers, lowering her chin. 

She’s done enough. 

Vanya steps carefully over his corpse on her way out, plucking the red leather book out of the wreckage to fold under her arm, and her violin case off the counter. She pulls the sleeves of his windbreaker over her cold, stiff fingers. There are a few spots of his blood on her, but that’s alright, she can clean them out later. Everything will be fine, once she’s with her family, once she tells them what’s happened to her.

She leaves through the front door, stepping out into a vacant street, and makes for the nearest bus station.

It’s just before dawn, and Vanya notes the dusky blue bloom of the sky, as she goes. 

She’ll stop by her apartment first, she decides, but then, she’s going home.

* * *

Throughout the entirety of their childhood, the Hargreeves children had never seen a single medical doctor, dentist or surgeon, despite their many ailments and injuries. Instead, their father, Grace and Pogo had presided over all medical matters; Reginald was careful to instill in his children a deep sense of distrust regarding hospitals, insisting they were ill-equipped to care for the children, given their specialness.

(When asked about why Vanya had all her examinations within the house, he simply replied that every experiment needed a control, which, naturally, had been a lie.)

This distrustfulness of hospitals persisted with the Hargreeves children well into adulthood, even those who’d left the house; Diego and Five patch up their own wounds themselves, Klaus pretends his do not exist, Allison had chosen to give birth at her mansion in Calabasas, rather than in a maternity ward, and though Vanya begrudgingly attends the standard number of doctors’ visits that ordinary people abide by, she does so in a state of deep anxiety, starting the night before she visits, and lasting into the day afterwards.

And, when they find their sister splayed out on the floor with her throat slit, her brothers naturally choose to haul her into Diego’s car, and drive for several hours with her in their laps, all the way back to the house, rather than calling an ambulance or taking her to the nearby hospital.

Diego’s Galaxy Coupe comes screaming up the street, right up onto the curb in front of the house, and the brothers pile out, screeching at each other, Luther and Klaus hoisting Allison up two flights of stairs and down three hallways, with her wound clumsily bandaged by a first aid kit they’d salvaged in the cabin.

Though it is well assumed by many that Five Hargreeves is the most durable of the Umbrella Academy, this fact is simply wrong; it is Allison. Not even Five is capable of clinging to life with an open near-mortal wound for hours, being jostled about like a ragdoll, and losing over twenty percent of his blood, and then being well enough to be on his feet and running in a matter of hours. Only Allison is strong enough to survive such a feat.

She is rushed into the infirmary, laid out on the single narrow reclining chair that the siblings generously refer to as an operating table, the dim lights sputter on, and the outdated equipment begins whirring.

Five keeps his hands firmly over her wound, holding her pulse in his hands as Grace, alive and alert and clad in a most certainly unsanitary nurse’s outfit, with her artificial hair hanging down into the workspace.

Ben, hovering unseen over the scene, notes sourly that there’s no wonder he died, with this lackluster care.

Each of the brothers is listening in hushed horror at the news that Allison has suffered a severe laceration to her larynx. That she will live, but she will be powerless.

Each of the brothers imagines it; having their power, their specialness, suddenly ripped from them, and each of them pales. 

Grace calls for blood, and each and every last of them leaps to volunteer, though the process of elimination is swift; Five has less to give, seeing as he’d lost a significant amount of it the previous day, Klaus’s is contaminated, and Luther’s is fundamentally different in its structure, thanks to his mutation. This leaves Diego, who flops like a fish onto the floor at the sight of the needle. 

Luther settles in beside her to guard her as she recovers, determined not to leave her in the care of Pogo.

When it becomes certain, then, that she will live, the rest of his brothers begin to file out, in search of something to distract them from the thought of what Allison will wake up as.

Dawn is breaking, and the world ends today, and they need to prepare for their next move. 

* * *

Klaus opts to distract himself from the existential terror of becoming ordinary with how he copes with all other terrors, existential or mundane; he begins rooting through his room madly, in search of old stashes he’d left behind over the past months and years. He’d built up quite a few caches over time, but he always has trouble recalling exactly where they’ll be; maybe Grace would clean them up, or maybe he’d just forget.

Regardless, it’s taking too damn long to find something. His fingertips are cold, and he can still smell Allison’s blood, can still hear the rattle of gunfire ringing in his ears. What the fuck’s the point of sobriety, if once you’ve got it, everything falls to pieces anyway, and you can’t even distract yourself from it? Everything is going horribly, he feels terrible, and he wants to forget, to drift back into that peaceful, numbing silence and float there for a while. 

“What are you doing?” clucks Ben, ever the mother hen.

“Looking for drugs? What does it look like?” 

At last, he finds something: a long-neglected unicorn plushie wedged between the side of his bed and the floor, with a familiar stitched-up scar up the back. _Now,_ he’s in business.

Ben sighs. “Don’t do it.”

“I’m done listening to you, thanks,” Klaus hisses, waving dismissively, “Just go away; go _away_ please.”

“You know, I happen to _like_ the sober you?”

“Yeah, well, sobriety is overrated.”

_You’ve been sober for two days._

“Look where it’s gotten you.”

You know, if Ben had lived, he’d make one hell of a life coach.

But, he didn’t, so, Klaus promptly rejects his insistence.

“And where _has_ it gotten me?” Klaus retorts, throwing up his arms helplessly, “Where’s it gotten me? Nowhere! I can’t talk to the person I love...”

Ben flinches.

He’s dead, is the thing. He’s dead. His monsters shouldn’t be gnawing at his gut the way they are right now. So this corkscrewing within him must be something else. 

“And people _still_ don’t take me seriously! I wanna be _numb_ again.”

Ben rolls his eyes, watching Klaus split the stuffed animal’s seam wide open and begin rifling through its fluffy guts, sending little clouds of filling floating down. 

“You’re a colossal wimp,” Ben sneers.

Both, it must be noted, are equally right. 

If one has lived life in a constant state of fear, of exhaustion, of the pain of trauma digging its teeth into one’s limbs, is it not fair, to want to relieve oneself of that pain?

And conversely, is it also not fair, to doubt one who’s spent decades in self-destruction, manipulating all around him for the purposes of that self-destruction, or else vanishing in times of great need?

Both, it must also be noted, are equally wrong.

Drug addiction is not an adequate solution to one’s problems, and how can one expect a runaway to come home, when the door’s always locked?

Both are Hargreeves. Of course they’re confused.

“Yeah, really,” Klaus fires back halfheartedly, eager to take the damn pills and shut Ben up for a minute.

“Yeah, really!” Ben snaps his fingers, like he would at a troublesome dog to bring it to heel, “Life isn’t supposed to be easy! Life is hard. Bad things happen. Good people die.”

 _Klaus has no idea,_ he thinks. _He has no idea what he’s throwing away right now. He has no idea what I would give to have it all back._

“Wow,” Klaus groans, shaking a handful of pills into his palm, “Playing the dead card again, huh? You need new material, bro.”

“I’m talking about Dave.”

 _Of course, it’s fucking Dave that makes Klaus shut his mouth,_ Ben notes bitterly, as Klaus pointedly ignores him, climbing to his feet.

“You know, I’m tired of seeing you wallow in self-defeat.”

“Well then, avert your gaze!”

 _I can’t, can I?_ Annoyance spikes through him. _I’m stuck here with you._

“You’re better than that,” Ben tries again, “And Dave knew it too.”

There he goes; Klaus deflates. Of course he does, for fucking Dave. 

“Yeah, you’re right. You’re right, I’m sorry.”

_Okay. We’re still good. We’re still going. God. What the fuck._

Ben doesn’t know _why_ he’s seething so much, why he just wants to whip around and smack him; it’s not like Klaus and Dave were together for long. What’s ten months to twelve _years?_

Well… No. He knows why he’s angry. He’s known it for a long, long time.

“Thank God,” Ben breathes, throwing up his hands in relief.

Klaus, a spiteful creature, makes sure to wait until Ben’s turned his back, before shrieking, “Psych!” and tossing the pills into his mouth.

He waits a second, cackling like a hyena, so Ben’s _sure_ to see the pills melting on his tongue, to know exactly what Klaus thinks of him and his moralizing, and that’s _it._

Ben whips around, draws back a fist, and--

It hits.

It _hits,_ flying into Klaus’s jaw, sending the drugs in a wide arc across the room to scatter on the floor.

They gape.

Somehow, Ben has literally punched the sobriety into Klaus. 

“You just _Patrick Swayzee’d_ me.”

Ben stares down at his hands, twitching each of his fingers, trying to find something out of the ordinary, something that might explain what he’s just done.

There’s nothing, so that means... “I didn’t do this. _You_ did… I think?”

He thinks.

And thinks.

And _keeps_ thinking, all throughout the mediocre family meeting Diego has mustered. Only he, Klaus, Five and technically Ben are in attendance; Luther has refused to leave Allison’s side for a second. 

“The bastard that nearly killed our sister is _out there,”_ snarls Diego, but Klaus is only half-listening. He’s lost in his own thoughts, digging his bare toes into the fluff torn loose from the couch by the bullets that’d shredded it a few days ago, wondering what on earth he could’ve done _differently_ to make Ben physical, for a split second, if he might be able to do it again.

Diego, now recovered from his fainting spell and anxious to regain that shred of dignity he’d lost on the floor of the infirmary, is pacing in the parlor, around and around the low table Vanya’d collapsed on days ago during the attack on the mansion. The shape of her is visible in the dust. 

_“With_ Vanya,” he realizes, recalling that Allison had only gone to Jenkins in the first place to retrieve her.

She hadn’t been in the cabin, so she may have gone with him, may be at his house in grave peril at this very moment. 

None of them think about the other possibility, that she may well be dead already, may be in some grave in the woods outside of Jackpine. They don’t want to entertain it at all.

“We need to go after her,” Diego urges.

 _Was it something I ate?_ Klaus wonders.

“We have to handle Jenkins first,” says Five, limping around the couch, already making for the door. 

_Oh, I’ll bet it was because I was barefoot. I do my best thinking when I’m barefoot._

“Well, yeah, that’s why there’s a group of us,” Diego heads after him, “So we can multitask.”

_Maybe when I was revived I took a little something extra with me back from Wherever That Was._

“I’m aware of that. I’m _just saying,_ in the event that we have to choose, we have to prioritize the apocalypse--”

“You guys go on ahead,” Klaus says, still lost in his thoughts. “Count me out.”

His brothers scowl.

“You’re coming.”

Oh, he doesn’t know about that. Going to ask the city serial killer to borrow a cup of sugar isn’t particularly his speed, even if that killer has his sister.

Not that he wants Vanya to _die,_ he just… doesn’t see why _he_ has to go get her.

He’s sure they can handle it.

“No offense, or whatever,” he fibs, “But I kinda think this is a whole lot of pressure for a newly-sober me. I think it’s a lot of pressure, you know? I’d just be holding you guys back.”

“Klaus,” Five barks, “Get up.”

“You can’t _make_ me,” Klaus sneers.

Five can’t, but as it turns out, when Diego whips a knife a millimeter from Klaus’s crotch, _he_ can.

Klaus follows his brothers sulkily to the Jenkins house, falling in behind them as they prepare for the fight of their lives.

* * *

Which doesn’t happen.

“Well, this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting,” Klaus admits, exactly ten seconds after they’d entered.

“The understatement of the year,” remarks Five.

Harold Jenkins… Leonard Peabody… Haroleonard Peakins… _Whoever_ he is, he’s dead.

He’s _really_ dead.

"Great," Diego sighs. "Another one."

"She's... still up there?" asks Klaus.

"You wanna go check?"

"Actually, I'm good."

"Great."

Diego leans in to peer at Peabody's corpse. 

He’s skewered through the chest with well over a dozen sharp projectiles, splayed out in the dining room, which looks like a hurricane had spontaneously appeared inside it.

The sweet, musky stench of decay is setting in, and Klaus reaches up to cover his nose, glancing around surreptitiously for the man’s ghost, which thankfully is absent.

“Vanya’s not here, I can’t find her anywhere,” calls Ben from the staircase, and Klaus mentions it coolly to the others.

Five peers at him oddly, but returns his gaze to the body, his eyes traveling past the scattering of knives stuck firmly through its chest to his face, to the one black, sharklike eye staring blankly at them, and… _Wait._

“I’ll bet Allison got his eye before he took her down,” Ben says to Klaus, peering over his shoulder. “Good on her.”

“Let’s get out of here, before the cops come,” Diego says, reaching for the Peabody landline, to punch in the number and leave it hanging, “Here, I’m calling them, and that’ll be it.”

“Fine by me,” Klaus replies, “See? You didn’t need me to be here--”

“--In a minute,” Five interjects, digging deep into his pocket to produce the glass eye, and leaning over the body.

Five ignores the sputters of disgust from behind him as he plucks off the soiled eyepatch on Harold’s right eye, digging his fingers into the meat of the socket as he pops the eye into place.

There it is.

“Same eye color, same pupil size. Guys, this is it!” Five exclaims, “The eye I’ve been carrying around for decades, it’s found its rightful home!”

“We got the guy we need? The one who stops the apocalypse?”

“That is disgusting,” says Ben, watching Five dig the soiled eye out of the socket, and return it to its pocket.

“Yay,” replies Klaus flatly. “Let’s go.”

Diego, without so much as looking up once, snatches Klaus by the back of the collar as he pivots to leave.

“It can’t be this easy,” Five fumes, pulling out the note he’d stolen from the Commission, “See, this says, _Protect Harold Jenkins,_ A.K.A. Leonard Peabody, but who killed him? Who did this?”

“You know what,” Klaus says, tired of it all, “Why don’t we just go find Vanya--” --he pauses in annoyance, as Five tears through space right in front of him, the rude little fucker-- “... and ask her what happened?”

“Well, if she got away from this asshole, she must be headed back to the Academy,” Diego says, tugging his car keys out of his pocket.

“Great.” Klaus groans. 

Diego lingers, for a moment, in the doorway, before they head out.

There’s an obvious answer, Diego knows, one that’s staring them all in the face, hanging over their heads like an axe, about to drop.  
Here’s a man who slit one sister’s throat, and abducted the other. A man who is now dead, with said other sister mysteriously missing.

It’s her. 

It’s Vanya. She did it. It’s the simplest conclusion, and the one that makes the most sense, but he looks around, at the sheer scale of the destruction in the room, and… no. _No, it can’t be. That doesn’t account for the mess. And Vanya’s tiny, there’s no way she could stab him this much._

Still. The idea’s ringing there at the back of his head, like a bell, and it won’t leave him alone.

* * *

After searching the house for Vanya, top to bottom, Five and his brothers have come up empty-handed. 

She’s nowhere, and they argue for a while about where they might look, contemplate driving back up to Jackpine to see if she’d escaped Jenkins all the way out there, and had been wandering through the woods, waiting for someone to arrive and tell her it’s safe to come out. 

She’ll have to wait a while, he supposes, watching Diego storm off to call Huxley General. Probably for that cop lady friend of his, the one he’s been cagey about.

Five rolls the weight of the eye over and over in his pocket.

This was too easy. It can’t just be _over._ He’s missing something, something obvious, something making his skin crawl.

“When you spoke to Dad,” he asks Klaus, “Did he say anything to you about the apocalypse?”

“Well,” says Klaus, leaning against the railing, far enough back that he ought to lose his balance and fall, “Not really. Gave me a terrific shave, but no clues. Oh, come to think of it, he did say something about _my_ potential...”

And Five’s off, limping down the stairs, wondering aloud at how their father even knew about the apocalypse. He’d been training them for it all their lives, had drilled it into them since they were old enough to sit up that the end is nigh, that the world will end soon, and the six of them were the only things holding the door to ensure the monster that was the apocalypse wouldn’t burst in.

He _had_ to have known something.

“... But listen, this whole jumping-through-time thing? How’d you know how to do that?”

“I _didn’t,”_ Five snarls. “Maybe you’d realize that if you were actually sober.”

“Hey now, I am sober! I’ve been sober for, like, two… _almost_ two days now.” 

Five scoffs. “Oh, two days?”

“Feels like forty-five years, to be honest…”

 _Forty-five years? You have no_ idea _what forty-five years looks like._

“Who do you think you’re kidding, Klaus? I’ve seen you fidgeting all day. You’re far from over it.”

“Oh? I guess we’re both fighting our addictions, then.”

“I’m not an addict.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re addicted to the apocalypse.”

“You’re wrong,” Five growls.

“First sign, right there: denial.” Klaus smirks, and turns on his heel, and Five refuses to give him the last word, flashing right in front of him to deliver a threatening finger to his face.

“You and I? We’re _not_ the same,” he says, and Klaus laughs.

“That look in your eye? I’ve seen it before. I know it’s the look of someone who doesn’t know who they are without their high anymore.”

“See it in the mirror?”

Klaus is unfazed. “Trust me, you gotta just… let it go.”

So Five does, pitching the damn eye into the wall, and watching it shatter.

It doesn’t make him feel any different, and Five limps off furiously, determined not to roll over and show his belly to _Klaus_ of all people. 

He’s adrift, is the truth. He’s got no idea at all, as to what to do. 

So naturally, Five gets roaring drunk.

A nice margarita, a great way to drink away the uncertainty of it all. He pours one for himself, another for Delores, and settles in, listening to the record player scratch away.

The buzz’ll kick in soon, and he won’t have to worry about that skittering, uncertain tension in the back of his mind, the pressing urge to look again.

 _Look at what?_ He challenges himself. _I’ve turned every stone over._

“Well, do you think we really did it? Think we actually stopped the apocalypse?” 

It’s rhetorical. The apocalypse is over with. It’s over, see how over it he is? See, Delores, how over it he is?

She doubts him. Wants to know about the next stage in his plan; this is why he likes her, she’s practically reading his mind.

“Now what?” Five considers.

He’d really never thought of it, of a world without an apocalypse to stop. It’d always been like a dream after waking, a vague memory of a feeling, a thing that ought to have been, that might yet be, but one so airy and shapeless he can’t make it out, let alone name it. 

“I don’t know, but I’m open to suggestions,” he finally offers, rolling the straw between his fingers. 

There’s a heavy, insistent knock at the door.

Five excuses himself, and heads for the door, drink in hand.

He’s hoping for Vanya, and is naturally disappointed when he sees his old coworker, and the thorn in his side for the past week, standing before him, training a gun on him.

“Hey, oldtimer,” says Hazel.

He’s not in the mood.

“Do you have my sister,” Five says, “And if not, would you like a margarita?”

Smartly, Hazel chooses to take the margarita. 

It takes him a minute, to put the gun down, to remember he’s not facing an enemy anymore. Five gets it; it’s hard to remember that the fight isn’t constant. And, of course, he attacked his house, tried to kill his family, and kidnapped and tortured his brother. Had he not come here under such an obvious cease-fire, he'd have driven Hazel's face into the blender blades.

“Well,” Hazel says, “There’s not much I can do about the past.”

Which, point.

Before he can ask Hazel about his intentions, Diego naturally takes this opportunity to dropkick Five’s guest.

Five observes the two of them brawling messily, smashing into antique furniture that’d never meant to be sat on. He sighs at the spectacle. Diego looks utterly ridiculous. Honestly, look at that _flip._

After a moment, it becomes clear that Diego is winning, unfortunately. 

Five sees Diego’s teeth close around Hazel’s ear, and thinks, _alright, that’s enough._

He snatches a crystal vase off the bar, jumps to the two of them, and promptly shatters it over the back of Diego’s skull.

He drops like a sack of rocks to the floor, groaning.

“I draw the line at biting,” Five explain succinctly to Hazel, who begins dabbing at the mark in his ear with a handkerchief he draws from his pocket. “Now make it quick, before he comes around.”

“I left my partner, quit my job at the Commission, came to volunteer.”

“To what.”

“To help stop the apocalypse.” 

Five snorts.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re a day late, and a dollar short. The fact that you’re here right now means that without a shadow of a doubt, the apocalypse is over.”

“Really?”

“The mark is dead. Found him this morning. You were the last known unknown left in the equation.”

“Shit, really?”

“Sure outcome. Hellrider ain’t riding.” Five gestures to the blender, and Hazel takes him up on his margarita. 

It’s a funny thing, drinking with someone who’d been trying to kill you only days ago. There’s a strange sort of sentimentality to it. So much can change so _fast,_ and already their prior clashes feel like they’d happened decades ago, rather than days ago.

Five supposes it’s the effect of the apocalypse’s cancellation. Things seem smaller in its wake. Even he, who keeps grudges and nurtures them carefully, can’t muster so much as a nasty word. He’s been chasing the apocalypse so long, he has no idea what to do afterwards. 

Hazel, it seems, has a plan.

“I’m done with all this madness,” he says, “Time to start over. You should do the same.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Well it doesn’t have to be hard. I mean, think about it: you never time travel, you never get caught up with the Handler… what happens?”

“I guess I’d have grown up to be an emotionally stunted man-child,” replies the emotionally stunted child-man.

“There you go; now you can grow up.”

Five glances at Delores, that last piece of the world that will never be, and something quiet in his mind flicks on. He knows what he’ll have to do, to set this behind him for good.

Five nods, more to himself than anyone else, and abandons his drink. 

Five sweeps Delores into his arms, and ambles off to find a knapsack.

Before he leaves, he glances down at Diego, who’s come to his senses, and is simply laying on the floor, catching his breath.

“Before I go, which of you was the triggerman for Detective Patch?”

Diego sits up.

“Triggerwoman.” 

“Oh. Too bad,” Five shifts Delores’s weight onto his other hip. “So much for closure. You have a good life.”

“You too.”

And then Five’s off to god-knows-where.

Diego is left alone with Hazel, who has decided to finish his drink before he takes his leave, and with the rabbit’s foot, weighing down his neck, heavy as an albatross.

“Margarita?” offers Hazel.

Diego stares up at him balefully. “I don’t drink.”

“Oh. Well, you want this lime, then? I can put it in this glass of water here, if you want.”

“... Actually, yeah.”

“Here.”

“Thanks.”

They sit for a minute, letting the quiet settle in beside them, like a third, unseen drinker.

Then, Diego admits it: “You know, I wanted to kill you. Your partner too.”

“I figured. Are you still going to try.”

Diego considers it for a moment.

“No.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it wouldn’t change anything. Eudora’s still in the ICU. She might be fine, they’re saying, but they’re saying something different every hour. It just wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”

 _None of it is,_ he’s realizing, staring around at the mess he’s made in the foyer. None of what he’s been doing, tearing down alleyways after criminals, beating them within an inch of their lives, slicing them to ribbons, has been changing anything. There’ll just be more tomorrow. 

It’s monotonous, it’s meaningless, it’s…

It’s exactly what he’s been doing, every day since he was ten, but now, there’s no one to tell him to do it anymore. 

_Oh. I’m not over it at all, am I?_

He isn’t. He isn’t at all. While each and every one of his siblings has packed up and moved on with their lives, he is the only one of them who is still mindlessly fighting criminals.

Diego feels his sweat-stained shirt clinging to his back, and suddenly wants to tear it off. Even what he’s wearing is a cheap, do-it-yourself version of that old mission uniform.

_Do-it-yourself. I’ve done it to myself._

“So, you’re putting that hatchet down.”

“I guess I am.”

“Even with Cha-Cha?”

Diego hesitates, glancing up at him.

“She’s my partner,” Hazel explains, a tense twist to his brow. 

Diego gets it. She isn’t his to handle.

“Even with her.” 

“Oh. Well, that’s good, then.”

They don’t talk, only exchange polite nods goodbye, after Hazel finishes his drink.

Diego stays there, in the mess he’s made, turning the rabbit’s paw over and over in his hand.

* * *

The thing about medically-induced comas, Luther knows from experience, is that you can sometimes hear what’s around you.

He remembers the clicking of Grace’s heels, the padding of Pogo’s feet, the clack of Dad’s shoes. The steady humming of the machinery in the infirmary. The mutters of disapproval. The silence, that kept going, and going.

It’s been years, but he still dreams about those sounds. About that silence.

He isn’t sure if Allison can hear him. She’s not comatose; she’s just unconscious, due to awaken at any moment.

But if she can hear, if she is listening from some quiet place deep within herself, then he wants her to know that he is here, to lend her some of the comfort he’d never had. He’s been here before, he’s walked this road, and he knows what pain she’ll awaken into; most of it is out of his hands, but what he _can_ do is spare her some of the uncertainty. 

So Luther takes a seat at her side, gently lacing her fingers through his. 

“I know that peaceful, dark place you’re in right now,” he says, bringing his cheek down to nuzzle at her knuckles, “And I know the pain you’ll be in when you wake up… to someone that’s not quite you anymore.”

 _It’ll hurt so much,_ he thinks, and hates that it’s Allison who is laid out on this table, that it isn’t any one of the others. She’ll suffer the pain of her wound, and the deeper, much more inextricable pain of knowing that she is powerless, after her improv tracheotomy, that she may be powerless forever.

But she won’t be alone. He won’t let that happen. It doesn’t matter that she and none of the others extended him that same mercy; he is Luther, he is Number One, and he has to be better, has to cling to those morals that have slipped loose from the rest of his siblings. 

Maybe the truth will stir her, he guesses, so he tries it.

“When I woke up, I was angry,” he admits, “I was _angry_ that you were gone, that you’d moved on with your life. And I was still stuck here, alone with Dad in this shitty old house.”

He remembers. The throbbing sense of emptiness in him, burning at the edges like a photograph set alight in the middle, and singing away towards the corners. 

He’d been so angry he couldn’t even see straight. He’d done everything right, and he’d only been punished for it; how was he meant to live then, if he could not trust the rules that had governed their lives for so long?

He’d been alone.

Not because they’d never returned, but because he stayed.

“But I was wrong, because I pushed everyone away, and…” Luther chokes, catches himself crying, “that’s including the one person I love with all my heart.”

He’s said it. The words are spoken, drifting in the air, and perhaps she has heard them.

Even if she hasn’t, it doesn't matter. Because he said them, and he knows them to be true, that he loves her more than anything. And now, there is no one to quiet him, or quickly usher him away.

But oh, he’s a _failure._ The role of head of the family has fallen onto his shoulders, now, after Dad’s death, and look at what he’s done with it. Attacks after attacks, a team that cannot function, a murder plot that lead utterly nowhere, an apocalypse, solved, but not by their hands.

And Allison, drifting back from the hands of death.

“Allison, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. And I won’t let you wake up alone.”

* * *

He doesn’t.

Allison wakes up, drawing in a quick, hissing intake of breath, and she is not alone.

She immediately begins tugging at the tube in her arm, and just as quickly as she’s started to pull, a gloved hand closes gently around her wrist, and a soft voice is urging her to _stop, please._

She does. But she still can’t quite breathe right; the inside of her mouth feels slimy in a way that sends a gust of panicked static through her brain, plucking at her impulse to tear it out, damn the consequences. For lack of anything else, Allison uses her fingers.

She notes, with absolute disgust, that there’s nothing in the world quite like the thick, soupy, chunky texture of blood, clinging to your mouth in a film that you have to scrape out with your nails so you can take in a breath. 

When she’s done, she takes the wipe Luther offers her, parting her lips and flicking her tongue experimentally. 

Good. She’s good. She can breathe, she can think again.

Her first thought is of Vanya.

She struggles to rasp out a word, a warning, but Luther touches her shoulder, shushing her concernedly. 

“No,” he says, “Don’t try to talk, don’t try to talk. It might open up again and cause more damage, alright? Grace says your voice box’s been lacerated.”

Allison blinks. 

She can’t talk, so… _oh._

Allison isn’t dead, but she may as well be. Her life is over.

Her rumor is _everything._ It’s what makes her special, what defined her rank in the family pecking order, what protected her on missions and kept her hands clean while her brothers bloodied themselves… It’s _everything,_ and the awful truth is that Allison can’t do anything without it. She can’t make friends, can’t meet lovers, can’t read her lines or demand a director give her a pass for her subpar readings, can’t parent her child, can’t do anything at all. 

There is only one thing in the world that she has that her power did not give her, and he is holding her hand in his, telling her tearfully how sorry he is that he wasn’t there for her. 

The apocalypse is over, Luther is telling her. Jenkins is dead, the world is saved, and there will be a tomorrow and a day after that, and a month after that, and a year after that, stretching on into infinity. Allison has a whole _life_ to live now, a future that is hers, and with that slash of her bow, Vanya had severed her from it. Vanya had _taken_ it from her.

She didn’t mean it, Allison knows. She’d been awake and aware, watching Vanya sob above her, and she understands why she did it: the two of them had been driven by impulse, in the end, she to settle Vanya as quickly as she can, and Vanya to never, ever have that in her again. 

But still.

How can she be expected to act, to make a living, if she doesn’t have a voice? 

How can she be expected to _live,_ if she’s just _ordinary?_

Allison feels anger in her gut, dark and horrible and alive, and she swallows thickly, wincing at the burning sear at her throat when she does so.

Allison draws up her hands, gestures for something to write with, but Luther is already rolling his chair over to a nearby counter, reaching around a tray piled high with soiled bandages for a notepad and a black marker.

He’d known that she’d need them, she realizes as she takes them into her hands, relieved that even without her voice, someone still understands her so well.

` Vanya, ` she writes.

“Uh, we don’t know where she is.”

She brings up a hand, and shakes it quickly.

No, he needs to know. He needs to know what she did.

` Powers, ` she adds, then underlines it, and taps the page, again and again.

 _“Powers?_ I don’t understand.”

“I do.”

It hurts too much to crane her neck, so Allison settles for straining her eyes, as she watches Pogo hobble in from the doorway. He always looks solemn, but there’s something in the way his head droops and his large gray brow twists. Suddenly, he looks ancient.

“It’s time.” he says gravely, “For the last of your father’s secrets to come to light.”

Pogo gestures for Luther to follow, casting a sharp, assessing glance at Allison, as Luther gently squeezes Allison’s hand, reassures her she’ll be fine, he won’t be gone for long, and begins puttering around the infirmary, making sure she has what she needs before he follows Pogo out.

In that time, Allison peers around, moving her head slowly, side to side, eyeing the soiled bandages, the IV linked to her arm, the surgical instruments piled high in the sink, awaiting cleaning. She sighs, looking at the mess that's been caused in saving her life, and a spark of pain erupts in her throat at the sound she makes.

It’s only after Luther has left, when Allison is pulling herself shakily to a sitting position on the operating table, that she realizes that she’d never told him it had been an accident.

* * *

Vanya steps out of the taxi that carried her to her childhood home without looking at the driver at all. It’d taken too long to get here, and even though Vanya knows it is in large part due to the location of her apartment, she is still a little upset about it. If it’d been a shorter trip, then perhaps she wouldn’t have had time for doubt to creep in.

Vanya is quiet and frightful as a thunderhead, in the minutes before it bursts, knowing it will soon send rain and lightning lashing down, but not knowing _when,_ very aware that nothing it can possibly do will stop the storm from tearing loose. There’s a near-constant slouch to her shoulders, borne down by the weight of this fear, of this certainty that something terrible will most certainly happen, and that she will be the cause of it, and that she has no idea how to stop it.

She doesn’t stop, forces her feet to shuffle constantly towards the gate; if she stops, her feet will become rooted to the sidewalk, and she has to see this through. 

She senses the house’s hesitation. It towers over her, holding its breath, the way she might loom over an enormous spider with her shoe in her hand, knowing she must crush it, but fearful that it has seen her, that it knows what she intends and will outwit her, crawling up her hand to bite it as she brings the shoe down. It has been waiting for her, peering down at her uncertainly, wincing at the creaking of the gate.

She keeps her hands balled tightly into the hem of Leonard’s windbreaker, fearful that the lions will snap her fingers off if she dares touch them, and she shoulders her way inside.

Everything feels lighter, within, Vanya realizes as she sets the leather journal down on a side table in the foyer, to take a look around the room. Vanya at first wonders if it’s that the chandelier has fallen, and the ceiling seems emptier without it, but then realizes that it is she who is lighter, no longer buried under so many layers of clothing, under the weight of her ordinariness, under the weight of her fear that she does not belong.

She will, you see. She is as extraordinary as the rest of her family, and they will see that, and they will listen to her, and they will understand, and they will help her.

There’s a shape on the mezzanine; it’s Luther, staring down at her from high above, pale and tense. He has been waiting for her.

He knows. She can hear it shaking in his voice when he greets her, in the way his steps fall heavily as he descends the stairs. He knows everything.

“She’s alive,” he says, and Vanya gasps in relief, her tears spilling out. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” she insists, unable to keep the tremble from her voice, or her hands as she extends them. _“Please,_ you have to believe me.”

“I do,” Luther lies.

He doesn’t know, is the thing. He doesn’t know if he believes her.

What he does know is what Pogo told him, just minutes prior. That she’d been immensely powerful, and profoundly uncontrollable. That she’d killed a string of nannies, that she’d _hurt their father,_ and scared him enough to build the cell he’d just seen. That if her power ever breaks loose, it could cause untold harm and destruction. 

What he does know is that she’d nearly killed Allison, had hurt her in a way she may never fully recover from, had severed her from her _power;_ for each of the Hargreeves, children who’d been raised to value their specialness above all, the thought of suddenly being brought down to the status of mortal is a thought each and every one of them has had nightmares about, and now Allison is living one. And Vanya had dealt it to her.

What he does know is that he hasn’t known Vanya in years. The sweet, timid girl he’d always been instructed to avoid in childhood has grown into a woman he simply does not know at all, a woman who slit Allison’s throat, who would willingly involve herself with a man like Harold Jenkins, a killer, who wants their family dead. 

Vanya quietly asks if she might see Allison.

Suppose she’s telling the truth, and she is still uncontrollable. What would happen, if she were to see their sister again?

Suppose she isn’t, that she’s lying. That she wants to go upstairs to the infirmary and finish what she’d started.

Suppose she is here to hurt the family. 

Luther can’t let it happen, and he won’t. He’s known what he needs to do since he’d set eyes on that rusted door and heard what it was meant for. He hasn’t been a good enough Number One, has failed his father and his family so many times, but he _won’t_ fail now. 

“Of course,” he says, when she asks if she might be allowed to see her, extending his arms slowly. “This is your home.”

Vanya collapses into them, shuddering and sobbing, insisting that she’d never meant to harm her, and his heart is cold and heavy in his chest, as he brings his arms up and around her, pulling her closer, closer, closer.

Vanya welcomes the tightness of his grip at first, finding it reassuring. There’s no chance he’ll slip away from her, not when he’s holding her as tight as this.

Then, it tightens. And tightens.

And Vanya can’t breathe.

Luther, it must be noted, is an exceedingly careful man. He’d grown up tearing doors from their hinges when he’d tug on their knobs too quickly, knocking his feet through floorboards if he dared stomp, ripping arms from their sockets if he weren’t especially careful with the foes his siblings and he would subdue. He had learned, quite well, how to contain his great strength. Here is a man with the power to lift tons of solid steel, with the ability to crush a human skull as though it were an eggshell. 

Here is a man who knows exactly what he is doing, when he settles his grip, lifts her to her tiptoes, and begins squeezing the air from her lungs.

Vanya kicks at him, like a bird caught in the jaws of a hunting dog, making soft, frightened noises, and Luther feels the black, heavy sludge of guilt settling in his gut.

He has to do this. He has to. He has to keep the family safe.

“I’m sorry too, Vanya,” he says. 

He can feel her heart pounding, fast and terrified against his chest as he holds her. He can hear her short, ragged breaths, like tearing paper. 

He isn’t going to let go, she realizes. He isn’t going to let go, and-- a sound. She needs a sound, and she makes one, driving her foot into the tile in a steady rhythm, taking that rhythm and pulling it up into herself, pushing it out as… as… what does she want it to _do?_

All around them, the house groans in terror, as the vaulted ceiling catches the sound and spreads it throughout the foyer, making the banisters tremble, sending showers of dust down to them.

Luther stares, terrified, but he doesn’t let go. 

Untold harm and destruction, he’d been told, and now he can _see_ it. 

Then, the house stops shaking.

The intense burning in Vanya’s lungs suddenly feels so far away. Everything is so far away, her pain, her thoughts, even Luther is blurring out of view above her. Vanya feels herself slipping limply from his arms, and the second of freefall before she hits the floor lasts forever.

* * *

Deep within the bowels of the house, rooted at its core, is the rusted sarcophagus that had been the site of the sin that would set in motion the end of the world. 

For twenty-five years, it lay rusting and gathering a thick layer of dust, as spiders spun curtains of cobwebs around it. 

Fifteen years ago, with the destruction of Vanya’s bedroom and her quiet exile to a string of boarding and finishing schools, it became the only proof that there had ever been a seventh Hargreeves child at all; there had been nothing of Vanya, only Seven, who survived in the scribbles in the margins of her father’s notebooks, the scattering of photographs Pogo had insisted be taken of her at twelve, which he keeps in a drawer on his bureau, and, of course, the chamber itself.

Four years ago, that had changed, when Vanya had sent a copy of her autobiography to her father; now, though it sits forgotten and unread on the shelf, it is there nonetheless, and proof of Vanya’s existence is undeniable.

The chamber lay in the pitch-black gut of the house, unspoken of, unvisited, unknown to all but Sir Reginald, and his assistants, conditioned so well that they wouldn’t even dream of speaking of it. 

That is, until today, until an hour ago, when Pogo had retrieved the key to the secret door concealed in the wooden paneling of a dead-end basement hallway, revealing to a befuddled Luther the most consequential of his father’s secrets; it is far from the only secret left of Reginald’s, and it may not even be the worst of them, but nonetheless, it is the one that will destroy them all.

Pogo had guided him down the long, dim tunnel, had shown him the vault-like cage and explained what it had been intended for, what had been done to his sister in it, and why it was vital, absolutely _vital,_ that she be contained.

And so, Luther had obliged; he is desperate, after nearly losing Allison, after realizing how poorly he’s protected the family. He’s One, after all; it’s his job to look after them all, and he is failing miserably, and he has no idea how to right the situation, so he takes the lifeline Pogo offers him, and decides that this is it.

Vanya wakes with a deep ache in her arm, pressed into her by the stiff, carpeted floor, and when she peels her cheek off of it, and glances around, she starts at the sight of the long, dark foam spikes, jagged and rowed as tightly together as teeth in the mouth of a shark.

The stripes of harsh fluorescent light illuminating the space are sputtering uncertainly; they hadn’t been on in nearly twenty-five years, and she is at once struck with terror at the thought that they might burst, and leave her in the dark.

Her heart pounds insistently at her chest, urging her to flee.

Vanya is trapped. In the cell, the very place where she had suffered the most traumatic experience in her young life, the one that had rattled her brain loose and set her on a path to misery, the place that has haunted her all her life, but has at last caught her and now has her in its jaws, the place whose memory is consuming her, like a wolf gnaws on bone.

She’s screaming, and no one can hear her. 

Outside, the murky shapes of her brothers are arguing, and they don’t bother to stop when she flings herself at the door, crying out to be released.

“So you locked our sister up, because you _think_ she has powers,” Diego is saying, in utter disbelief. 

“I don’t _think_ it,” Luther retorts, “I _know_ it. Allison said so and she wouldn’t lie about this. Dad knew too, and Pogo; he’s the one who showed me this place. I mean, look at it, what else do you think it could’ve been _built_ for?” 

Diego nods, slowly, turning to look at the stained concrete walls, the dim molten glow of lights about to sputter out, the denseness of the metal walls of the cage, the way it’s bolted securely into the foundation of the chamber itself. And through the dusty, narrow window, past the pleading form of Vanya, at the foam spines, in their very design intended to suppress sound.

It’s for her. He knows it, deep in his bones. 

“Well, why would they hide this from us?” 

“Pogo hid it because Dad asked him to. And Dad hid it because he was afraid. Of _her.”_

There’s a tremble in his voice; Luther has never known his father to fear anything at all, had thought him incapable of surrender or cowardice or aversion, so the thought that he had been this terrified by the power within Vanya that he’d felt it necessary to build this place… Well. The feeling stirring in Luther is akin to the one he’d had when he’d been suspended in the vacuum of space for the very first time, and saw the first hairline crack trace its way across his helmet; he is suddenly aware of his smallness, of the ease with which he might be snuffed out entirely, and it _terrifies_ him.

“Her?” Diego scoffs. 

“Diego,” Luther says, his voice a deep, serious rumble, _“She’s_ the one who hurt Allison. Not Harold Jenkins.”

_“What?”_

“Allison told me when she woke up. She wouldn’t lie.”

Diego pales, remembering the blood soaking into the floormat, the wet, guttural gasps, the way Allison’s eyes bugged out… 

He remembers Jenkins’s house. The storm of shards sticking into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the knives driven hilt-deep into the man’s body.

He’d wondered, then, how Vanya _possibly_ could’ve killed him, if it had indeed been her.

Well. Now he knows. 

“She killed Harold Jenkins too,” he says. “At the house, we went to find him, and he was dead. All torn up, glass and splinters everywhere, like a tornado hit the inside of the house. She must’ve used her powers to do it.”

“Oh come on,” says Klaus, shaking his head, “This is Vanya we’re talking about. Our sister, who always cried when we stepped on ants as kids. You don’t think she’d be capable of _that,_ do you?”

He thinks back to the night before, to the four of them rushing into that cabin, to Luther, cradling Allison as her blood runs out, and sobbing. He _knows_ that pain, he’s felt it only days ago, he still feels it _now,_ tearing into him.

Allison will live; that much is certain, but Eudora… He still doesn’t know. Diego called Beeman an hour ago, heard that she’s still in and out, heard the disdain in his voice that he just _knew_ was directed at him, sat there listening to the dial tone for minutes after Beeman had hung up. He feels that anger he’d felt then, seething in him, rising to boil over...

“I don’t know,” Diego says at last. “I just don’t know.”

“And for all we know,” Klaus continues, recalling his own experience in the mausoleum; he _knows_ this terror Vanya’s feeling right now, he’s felt it himself; “She might be _struggling_ with this new power. I mean, it must be scary. Terrifying, really, to discover that you can do something that you never thought you could do. I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Diego imagines it: _Vanya,_ sending a storm of sharp objects to slice Harold Jenkins into ribbons, _Vanya_ snatching a blade and tearing Allison’s throat in two… He pictures the moments that could’ve lead up to it: Vanya and Harold, working together to lure Allison into a trap, Vanya, _betraying_ him…

“I don’t think it matters,” says Ben, peering over Klaus’s shoulder, as Luther and Diego promptly explode into an argument as to how long Vanya would be confined. “I think he’s right.”

“What?” Klaus hisses. “That’s insane!”

“No. You’re insane,” Ben crosses his arms, staring at Vanya guardedly. “For thinking it would matter, if she wanted to do it or not. You know, I know a thing or two about all of this.”

“About _what?_ What are you _talking_ about?”

Ben chooses his words carefully, still seems quite unsure of them: “What I’m saying, is that Vanya isn’t the only one here with an overwhelming power that can cause a lot of harm, that she’s got a problem with controlling. You’re all talking a lot of shit right now, but of all of us, I’d say that _I’m_ the one who gets what we’re dealing with the most.”

Klaus tenses. He gets it, he _does,_ but, “You don’t think that _this_ is the answer, do you?”

“I think,” Ben says it delicately, as though he were performing heart surgery with his words, “That it’s the first step to one.” He folds his arms around his abdomen, and his face twists, like his gut’s clenching. “Let me put it this way: If I’d had a way to contain this, or if I… If I had someone keeping an eye on me… Well, maybe I’d still _be_ here.”

Klaus draws in a sharp breath, feeling everything going perfectly still.

“You really think you’d...”

 _“Yes.”_ Ben says, with absolute conviction.

And Klaus can’t argue with it. He _can’t._

He stares at Vanya, watches her eyes flit to his and sees her mouth his name in desperation, and he takes a step back, slowly turning away, his face burning.

“It’s just temporary,” says Ben at his side, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself more than he is Klaus. “Okay? It’s just temporary. Until things settle down, until we figure out what to do.”

“Fine.” he says. _“Fine.”_

He starts down the hall, his lungs suddenly itching to be away from the cold, dank air, and stops dead in his tracks.

“Allison,” says Luther, from behind him, and Diego shuts right up.

She’s on her feet, leaning unsteadily against the grimy rounded wall, drawing in quick, sharp breaths through her parted lips. There’s sweat on her forehead, like the very act of walking down the hall has drained her, and her skin has a corpselike gray tinge to it. 

But she’s on her feet, well enough to get up at all, to shower and change and walk through the house, to find the elevator and take it down all on her own. She’d gotten up, and she’d taken one step, and then the next, and then the next, and she had found them.

In that time she had been awake and moving about, she’d been alone with her thoughts, had time to sift through each and every one of them, to turn them over and examine them as she wiped the blood from her chest with a warm washcloth, as she pulled a soft cotton shirt over her head and threw the ruined one in the frilly little trash can in the corner of her bedroom.

The thing is, when she’d woken up, she didn’t know what to feel. A sickening churn of conflicting feelings had been all battling for dominance within her; guilt and fear and sorrow and anger and a dozen others she didn't know how to name. 

She didn’t know what to do then.

But she does now.

Allison stares, eyes straining against the dull light, peering into the terrible place, past her brothers, past the glass, at her sister, staring at her, mouthing her name, her face sticky with tears.

She’s been here before, has walked down this tunnel, has stood in this exact spot, has stared in at her sister, trapped in the stomach of the house, and scratching at its walls, desperate to be let out. 

They’re right back where they started. What a mess.

Their family are waiting for her, so she pulls out her notepad, flips open, and writes a command.

`Let her go.`

“But she _hurt_ you.”

Allison winces.

She had. She’d reached out and cleaved Allison’s future from her. 

_But maybe,_ Allison thinks, _that might’ve been for the better._

Her rumor is _everything,_ and look at what she’s used it for. Look at this trail of ruin she’s left in her wake.

Broken teeth and broken bones and shattered skulls, trailing all the way back to her Academy days.

Talented, sweet actresses with big hearts and big dreams, whose careers will never, ever take off, who will lose that flash-in-the-pan chance at success and sputter out after a few years of taking walk-ons and guest spots, who will suffer the slow death of their hopes, settling into quiet lives they’d never intended to have, never knowing whether they could have _been_ somebody, because she’d swept in and stolen their shots at stardom.

A line of lovers who can’t remember ever saying yes to dinner or drinks or dates with her, who she’d leave weeks or months later, after drinking her fill of their affections, who she’d leave still brimming with love for her, because she’d never been brave enough to take back what she’d whispered in their ears.

A husband, who’d never intended to marry her, who’d never intended to become a father.

A child, who hasn’t been herself in over half her life.

 _Maybe,_ Allison thinks, _I shouldn’t have it._

She’d had such power, and she’d used it so selfishly, so recklessly, caring so little about the lives she’d uprooted and thrown over her shoulders, so long as she could have what she wanted without having to fight for it. 

She’d tried to go off of it before, and look at how quickly she came running back. Perhaps even _she_ isn’t immune to the rumor’s thrall; she’d been raised to obsess over it, and even now, years after the Academy had come to an end, it still has her. It’s wrapped up around her like a smothering, constricting vine, crooning that she need not ask, need not argue, need not wait or worry or wonder, why would she _ever_ need to grow, when it is right _here_ to take care of her? 

It feels _right,_ in a strange, cosmic sort of way, that the first person Allison had ever harmed with it had been the one to take it from her.

It’s gone now. 

It’s _gone,_ for weeks or months or even forever, and Allison has no choice but to live with it.

Vanya had reached out with her bow and severed the leash binding her to her power, setting her loose into the world, and forcing her to live as she did. Now, there are no more excuses, there is no shortcut, there is no chance for relapse; there is only Allison, and she is going to finally be able to force herself to learn, to work for the things she wants, to grow a thick skin and learn to be okay that not everyone will love her and not everything will go as planned.

After decades of being lost in an artificial world of her own creation, she has finally stepped out into the real thing. She’s had the door to the gilded cage surrounding her mind sprung open, and now she is in the wild. Now, Allison might finally be able to grow into herself. 

She stares at Vanya, who had hurt her, and forgives her completely.

She stares at Vanya, in the space where this mess between them had all started, where they have come full circle, and thinks of how she’d said the wrong thing when she’d awakened. That she’d withheld that vital bit of truth that could’ve prevented them from ever repeating this imprisonment, because she’d been so caught up in herself that she’d let it slip her mind. That the only reason why Vanya had lashed out at all, was because she’d had so little control over herself, that she couldn’t think of a single way to calm Vanya down that didn’t involve using the very thing that had whipped her into a panic to begin with.

She writes:  `My fault.`

She watches her brothers read her words, watches the change come over their faces, the uncertain glances back and forth.

But they don’t turn towards the cell. They don’t go to the door, where Vanya is clinging to the window, weeping and mouthing _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_. They don’t pull on the dial. 

Allison’s mouth drops, appalled, as Klaus and Diego set off down the tunnel, keeping their eyes firmly ahead and their jaws set, to keep the guilt from bleeding through.

Fine then, she’ll do it herself.

Allison moves forwards, pushing past Luther, but he catches her, an impenetrable, fearful wall.

“I’m sorry,” Luther says, “But she’s staying put. Just until we know what we’re dealing with.”

 _It's a temporary solution,_ he is telling himself, believing it. Everything has happened so _quickly;_ they need time to think, to plan, to determine their next move, and their father had built this cell for a reason.

Inside, Vanya, sobbing despondently, watches as Allison beats at Luther’s chest with her fists for a moment, before slowly coming to a stop, gasping heavily for breath, her lips blue, crushing her face to Luther’s shoulder to smear her tears into his shirt. 

She’s heard none of the argument, only watched her brothers shift from confused to closed-off, as she now watches Allison call to set her free, before sinking her head in defeat, too depleted to put up much of a fight. 

She does not hear her brothers, insisting that this will only be temporary, so when she watches them all leave, one after the next, with Luther gently supporting Allison as she limps away, Vanya is overcome with the wild fear that they will leave her here, among the worst of her memories, to starve.

They leave her there, entombed in the dark, to be consumed by her terror.

* * *

Five takes his time, heading to Gimbel Brothers’. 

He could jump, he knows, but he thinks it’s important, to make the journey himself, to let time pass as it should, sifting away from him like the slow pull of silk through his fingers.

He doesn’t even take the car, or a taxi or a bus. He uses his own feet, leaving the house, setting off on his walk across the city. The world is safe, and he doesn’t need to sprint anymore, can walk at a leisurely pace across Midtown and look up to see the skyline and stop to smell the roses. He can walk until his feet go numb in their dress shoes, and the spring in his step finally doesn’t feel strange.

It’s a _beautiful_ day, the newspaper had claimed, and it is correct. It’s sunny, with a few enormous fluffy clouds on the horizon, the temperature in that wonderful space where Five feels perfectly comfortable with his jacket on, but his knees don’t feel cold in the slightest. There’s a cool, pleasant breeze blowing in from the west, and he can smell the trees when he passes Morrison Park.

It’s a beautiful day, and tomorrow will be just as beautiful, because there will be a tomorrow. 

The world is safe now, and now Five can have a life, a _true_ life, one that isn’t dominated by violence or survival, one he can define for himself.

But first, there is one last thing he has to do.

He must relieve himself of the weight perched on his shoulders, the one he’s been dragging across the city for over an hour now. The world has been set back into place, and now it is only fair that Delores is as well. His time with her had been defined by the apocalypse, by ash and ruin and death, and his resurrection of the two of them had been wrought by that obsession with Doomsday. 

Klaus is right, not that he’ll ever admit it: Five’s addicted to the apocalypse, and he simply can’t give it up. The end of the world haunts him; it’s _clinging_ to him, drifting in from the edge of his senses to claw at him, and in some way, maybe letting go of her will help him find his footing here, in the world-without-end. 

It’s not so bad; they always were an unlikely pair, after all. This break has been coming for a very long time.

He arrives to the late afternoon sun sinking over the massive concrete box of the department store building, walks right in past the Seniors’ Tuesdays sign, past the employee in the bright yellow vest who is paid too little to care about the immense sack strapped to his back, or the mannequin he produces from inside it. 

Five settles Delores gently on the stand he’d taken her from, feeling a pleasant sort of melancholy at the sight of her; the kind retirees get thinking back on times long past, times never to be returned to, but to be remembered. 

“I want you to know,” he says, “That I cherished every single minute I ever shared with you, all twenty-three-and-a-half-million of them.” 

It’s true; she’d made a hostile, horrible world a little more liveable. In many regards, he owes his sanity entirely to her. He, like the rest of his siblings, had taken those tender, human feelings that he’d been trained by a lifetime with his father to hide, to deny, to guard viciously, to trust in the hands of only a single confidante, and she had become the vessel for them when he’d had no one at all.

They’d spent a lifetime together, but now _look_ at them, lucky enough to have gained a _second_ one, one in a living world with a bright future, where it is at last safe for him to pursue the things he’d had to put aside in order to deal with the apocalypse. 

He takes her in one last time, then turns and does not look back once as he leaves. The world after the apocalypse is shrouded in mist, but he can already make out the shape of what he might yet have, and his heartstrings pluck like those of a violin at the thought of what he is walking towards.

He’s ready, he thinks. Ready for his family, ready for a future with them. 

After forty-five years, Five is finally ready to come home.

* * *

The most powerful of anechoic chambers, which the cell in the sub-basement of the Hargreeves house is certainly styled after, are not designed to linger in. At the maximum, a person can last for roughly forty-five minutes, before becoming deeply disturbed by the sounds of their own body, and prone to intense, frightening thoughts.

As a child, Vanya had been confined to this very chamber for nearly a month.

And now, at twenty-nine, Vanya has been banging on the door, pacing in a panic, sobbing and rocking on the ground, for nearly an hour.

She has cried herself empty, and is staring at that terrible window, sitting in the tiny rectangle of golden light it has cast on the floor, quietly feeling herself unravel, remembering in vivid detail counting each and every one of the foam spikes on the walls, thinking about what games her siblings might be playing while she languished, forgotten, below.

Vanya can hear her blood pumping in her ears and sluicing through her jugular, the shuddering of her lungs, the acidic gurgle of her stomach, the rabbit-y kicking of her heart, the rustling of Leonard’s windbreaker as she shifts unsteadily, sitting on the floor and swaying as though she is lost at sea, _no,_ she is trapped in the belly of a monster, and it is beginning to digest her.

She stares down at the sleeves of Leonard’s windbreaker, at the tiny flecks of his blood that are scattered across her front. 

She hadn’t killed Leonard on impulse, but of her own free will. She had done it because she wanted to, because she was angry, because she was afraid, because it felt _good_ to rid herself of him. But now, she thinks of his words to her about her family, and finds she simply cannot deny them anymore.

 _He lied to me,_ she tells herself. _But not about everything._

She can’t breathe. Each shallow gasp she takes never seems to reach her lungs, and her heart keeps bruising at the inside of her ribcage, crying out to escape. 

The truth is, that Vanya has known this entire time what it would take to escape. That she has all the sound she needs within her. That all she has to do is reach down and take it, and she will be able to break out of this cell.

That, by virtue of its very construction in the roots of the house, its destruction would result in the absolute collapse of the entire building, and, in all likelihood, the deaths of any within it.

She hates it, she _hates_ it, _she hates it._

But she can’t breathe in here, and she cannot stay. 

So, Vanya shudders, and rises to her feet, deciding, _fine._

Vanya stares at herself reflected in the dim, fingerprint-stained glass, and hating what she sees, turns her back to the door, facing the row of spikes.

She closes her eyes, draws deep on the beating of her own heart, and feels it swell up to meet her.

Sound is made up of waves, and if one is not careful when drifting among them, one might find themselves caught in a whirlpool or ripcurrent, or look up to see a surge the size of a skyscraper, crashing down on you.

Vanya is not overwhelmed by the tide of her own power; she submerges willingly, allowing herself to sink down, to let the ripple churn into a tidal wave, one big enough to set her free. She knows the cost, and she’ll pay it. If she is going to leave this place, if she is going to _live,_ she will have to travel down into the space within herself, which is vast and deep and dark, an abyss stretching down into infinity.

It isn’t empty, no, it is _teeming_ with her long-lost emotions, the ones that had been buried by years and years of unnecessary medication and small reproaches and the thick white mist of a rumor, ones that are stirring and being drawn up by her power, _invited_ up to break the surface and give her the fuel to free herself. 

The quickest ones, the most persistent ones, only seem to be her own fears, the swift, spiny, needle-toothed ones that swim up to nip at her heels whenever she is in a moment of vulnerability. They surge up the fastest of all, crowding out all the rest of her feelings and sending them scattering back to the dark, hungry to dominate her, to feed themselves to her power.

She lets them. She lets them in, lets them break the surface, lets them surround her like a swarm of eels, slithering around her shoulders and pressing her down and down and down into that void they’ve left behind, that abyss that keeps getting colder and darker the deeper she descends. 

_It’s okay,_ she tells herself. _It’s okay, I have to do this. This is the cost of being free, of saving myself, and I will pay it._

Vanya realizes, rather suddenly, that she is like a deep sea diver, looking up to realize that, as far down as she has gone, the midday sky now appears dark as night, and the sun only as bright as the dimmest star. The weight of the world is suddenly so heavy that she cannot force her way up anymore, and the space around her is so cold that it saps the heat from her bones, and she is so, _so_ tired, so content to drift in that darkness for a while, where no one can reach her, where no one can harm her.

She keeps her eyes open, and accepts each and every one of those terrors, as they supplant her, takes them into herself and chooses to see them as fact:

Her siblings _are_ just like her father. They are cold, callous, vicious creatures who would only show her tenderness as a ploy, who _do_ want her small and quiet and alone and out of sight forever, lest she take up some of their limelight, and they _will_ keep her here forever, until she wastes away and dies. 

They will keep her here, and she has been a true idiot, thinking as long as she has that they might love her if she only waits long enough. She should know by now that nothing comes of waiting.

They’re going to keep her here forever, and nothing will end, not until she _acts,_ not until she embraces what she is, what she’s _been_ all along, what she _must_ become if she is going to escape.

She reaches the conclusion slowly, coldly: Why had this cage been built, if it had not been intended to be used? Why had she been stripped of her power, if not because she had revealed herself to be terrible enough to warrant that punishment? What else _can_ she be, then, but a monster, utterly at the whims of her wildly destructive power? 

She takes that awful, hideous truth into herself, and accepts it. She is a monster, and so she will indulge in the feelings of monsters, and so she will do what monsters do. 

Vanya’s terror rolls away, making room for her anger to churn up to the surface, to brew a storm in her the likes of which there has never been before.

The jagged walls of her cell buckle, screech, and shatter around her, and deep inside herself, Vanya starts to drown.


	7. playing on, insane

The door to Vanya's cell clangs down to the floor with a cacophonous, final-sounding  _ clang,  _ which resounds through all the house, rumbling like thunder from the lowest level of the basement to the eaves of the attic. The last terrible secret built into the foundation of the Hargreeves house itself is out, and now, the whole thing’s coming to pieces. 

Floors above, her family are realizing, one by one, Luther first of all, exactly what she has done, and exactly what she will do when she reaches them. They are racing down the children’s hallway, crying out in panic, only given vague direction by Luther when he screams for his brothers to collect Grace, as he guides a limping Allison up the stairs, before the steady footsteps drumming their way around the corner can turn and reach them.

Deep below, Vanya’s emotions had burned so brightly that they’d come full circle, snapping around to a strange sort of numbness; the worst of her fears are driving her now, maneuvering her like a stiff windup toy out of the cell and down the hall of the basement, which quivers in fear of her and what she will do, and into the elevator, rattling a warning call to the house as it rises.

And what she will do is clear. Vanya’s fear had drowned out everything, and a cold, alien sort of logic had frozen over her. She knows with icy certainty what she must do, in order to be safe again, in order to thaw the terror and return to herself: she must escape, she must rid herself of her family, she must stop anyone and everyone who stands in her way, and she must play her concert at the Icarus, and have her moment at last.

She has escaped her cell, and now, she goes to her family, and shows them that she understands now, truly, what they think of her.

Vanya walks out of the elevator, up the side-stairs leading to the second story of the house, down a winding hall, and another, and another, until she reaches the children’s hallway. With every step, she chooses and continues to choose to travel further down the path of destruction; she is possessed, not by her power, nor any vengeful spirit, but by her own fear and fury. 

She barely misses Allison and Luther, as she enters the hall, and it is a good thing that she does; in her state, she would have certainly killed them had she laid eyes on them. 

Vanya walks slowly, purposefully, from room to room, drifting through the memories of her old life, a ghost clad in the clothes of the boyfriend she’d just killed, staring into the past, at each and every rejection, great and small, from a tiny slight about her ordinariness to the deeply personal betrayal of coming home from boarding school to find her bedroom gone, and every possession that she hadn’t thought to take with her consigned to the dumpsters outside. Each and every slight gathers, solidifying into a massive wall of isolation, and she gathers her power, to tear it down.

She thinks of them all: Luther and Diego, Ben and Klaus and even Allison does not escape her wrath; Vanya knows that Allison had wanted her set free, but she also knows that it did not happen. She knows that twenty-five years of bad blood is thick and viscous and she’s up to her neck in it, and in the state that she is in, she has coldly concluded that five days of kindness simply isn’t enough to make up for it.

So, she scrubs their rooms from the map, her anger burning bright and cold within her, leaking out to turn her skin white as death, her eyes glowing with seething fury.

She walks, almost leisurely, as the walls tremble around her, folding like paper in her wake and moaning, as if in pain. She descends the stairs, and when her feet leave the boards, they shatter into splinters behind her. All around her is the sound of the house falling, and it roils around her; she is inside the wave of a tsunami, and they are feeding each other.

Somewhere above her, in the mezzanine, her brothers are scrambling, so Vanya flippantly sends an enormous chunk of ceiling down to crush them, then is on her way without so much as a second look.

They live, Klaus scrabbling out of reach, and Ben dragging a dazed Diego to safety, staring in wonder at what he’s done, and then, once they’ve raced out into the alleyway, in annoyance, as Diego credits Klaus with his act, pressing his hands to Klaus’s face and staring at him in awe.

Vanya is not there to see any of it; she has already moved on, is glaring at the portrait of her father in the parlor, hearing his words rattle in her head. Vanya is not boiling with hate; her anger is still as a glacier, cold and deep and utterly still, as she calls upon the rumbling of the foundation, draws the sound upwards and into herself, orders it to make the house shudder and buckle and--

“That’s quite enough!” Pogo cries from behind her, rapping the end of his cane into the tile, as though she were an insolent child lost to the throes of a temper tantrum.

Vanya surfaces from deep within herself, and the house stills.

Because this is  _ Pogo. _ This is her dear old simian uncle, who’d held her hand when she was little, and sat with her when she was alone all day, and welcomed her home, and reassured her that she belonged. This is someone who loves her.

But then, he opens his mouth, urging her to settle down, that her siblings are not to blame, for what was done with her. Vanya’s mouth tightens. There’s that line again, between their father’s will and their own. It had always seemed to be moving, always seems to be blurred, just enough to make her wonder, but now she knows. She is wiser now: there is no difference. They are all the same, he and they and now Pogo too. They are all the same, and she will never be safe with any of them.

“Did you know?” she asks, the tears catching in her voice.

She is extending a lifeline to him:  _ say you didn’t, and you can go. Please, please, say you didn’t.  _

Pogo stares just beyond Vanya, up at the balustrade, where Luther and Allison are limping carefully towards the stairwell. He’ll wait a moment, before he tells her, to give them enough time to slip out of eyeshot.

“Your father discovered that you were capable of great things. But your powers were… too great.”

Vanya chokes. First she’s too useless, now she’s too great; it never does seem like she will ever be just  _ enough. _

“Did you  _ know?” _ she asks again, colder. She knows the answer; she just has to hear him say it.

Allison and Luther have gone.

“Yes, Miss Vanya,” Pogo says, shrugging off the weight of his master’s secrets at last, knowing now how terrible it had been to keep them at all, knowing that he has lost the last of her love and will never regain it, “I knew.”

Vanya closes her eyes, sighing, taking that tie of tenderness that binds her to him, and severing it. He is no different from the rest, and so he must be handled like the rest.

She lets go, submerging deep into that frigid darkness within herself, and reaches into his chest, to the soft drumbeat of his aging heart, closing her fingers around it. Something vicious in her, the meaty, dark monstrous part that settles in her gut like a tapeworm and  _ snarls, _ feels a stab of glee at the way his face seizes up.

It’s a tiny part of her, but it’s there, and she’s decided to listen to it. So yeah, she likes this, just a little.

Vanya squeezes on his traitorous heart, the one she now sees as rotten and shriveled, presses a beat out of it, and with it, she lifts Pogo ten feet off the ground, bearing him across the parlor, to the sharp curve of the antlers mounted about the fireplace, just below the portrait of his master.

She impales him there, watches him twitch and spit up a dribble of blood, watches him and feels nothing at all, knowing that she  _ must  _ stay and  _ must  _ see him die, to know that he is truly dead and she is safe from him. 

She is completely naive to Luther and Allison, stealing across the foyer and out the front door, but Luther is not naive to  _ her; _ he turns, and watches her for a moment, sees her staring up at Pogo as his last breath shudders, and feels his heart freeze over with fear of her, before Allison’s hand catches into his, and she hauls him out into the street, where they run and run and  _ run, _ struck dumb with panic. 

They race right past the alley in which Klaus and Diego are standing, and none register each other’s presence; Allison and Luther because they do not think to look anywhere but ahead, Klaus and Diego because they are otherwise occupied with wrestling each other. Klaus has his arms in a tight grip around Diego, digging his heels into the ground, preventing him from sprinting back into the house after Grace, who waves to them from a third-floor window, blowing them a kiss, whose programming now allows her to leave the house, had chosen to stay, had and was only looking to them at all to say goodbye.

Inside, Vanya is naive to her sibling’s escapes. Her family, she assumes, are somewhere within the labyrinth of halls, scurrying like rats through a maze, and when she settles down, and thaws from her current state of mind, she will certainly feel the weight of what she has done, but for now, as she sends the mansion collapsing in upon itself, she feels nothing at all. 

She walks steadily down from the steps of the Hargreeves house, the stone lions crumbling to bow to her as she passes. Behind her, the vast, tumultuous crash of the house-- all six stories containing over a hundred rooms, all tumbling down at once, as though it had been made of cards-- shakes the street like an earthquake, yet she doesn’t stumble at all. Instead, her strides are loose and languid, the weight of terror lifted from her; why should she be afraid now, when everyone who has hurt her is dead, when she is free of them forever? 

There is only one thing Vanya has left to do, and she strides with absolute certainty out into the night, never looking back once.

* * *

Like vermin, the Academy trickle in from the cracks in the wreckage, staring about unsteadily, perpetually scanning for threats. 

Klaus and Diego emerge with dust pouring from their shoulders and caked in their hair and being coughed from their lungs, fresh scrapes marring their arms and faces. There’s an ease to the way they walk together, one created through the act of dragging each other out of a shattering building, of having watched Grace vanish under the rubble. Ben is hovering behind them, staring open-mouthed at what’s become of their home. It’d been reduced to rubble so  _ quickly. _

They emerge in stunned silence, then Diego launches himself towards the crumbling mountain, dropping to his knees and tearing at it with his gloved hands. He is looking for Grace, somewhere at the core of the remains, hopes that she might be pulled out, and revived.

Klaus’s hands find his shoulders, and wrench him up, but Diego whips around and shoves him harshly in the chest, enraged.

“What are you doing? She’s still down there!”

“Diego, she’s  _ gone. _ You can’t just--”

“And what do you wanna do?” Diego snaps, then chokes on his words, now without his mother to guide him through it, now managing it himself; “You w-w-wan-wanna walk  _ away  _ from this?”

“No,” Klaus insists.

“What about Pogo?”

“He didn’t make it.” It’s Luther, walking in from outside the bounds of the rubble, Allison on his heels, stepping unsteadily over the wreckage. “Vanya killed him.”

_ “What?” _

“I saw it.” Luther’s face is ashen, his voice low and tremulous. “She meant it.”

“Fuck,” Diego curses, staring around at the mountain of shattered porcelain and concrete and plaster, as if he might find Pogo buried beneath it. 

“It’s her, isn’t it?” asks Klaus. He doesn’t have to elaborate; they all know he’s speaking of the apocalypse, and its mysterious cause, and they all take that horrible thought into their hearts and accept it as true.

They don’t have time to reflect on it;  The prying, blinding light of a helicopter sweeps over them, and immediately, the Hargreeves siblings scatter like cockroaches, Diego bounding over a fallen pillar and crying out the name of a meeting place nearby, Klaus stumbling towards the street with Ben on his heels, Allison leaping into Luther’s arms so he can sprint them over mountains of debris too treacherous for her to climb in her weakened state.

They regroup a block over, at Super Star Lanes, the bowling alley they’d been taken to a few times as teenagers as a reward for a mission well done. It’s exactly as shabby and washed out as they remember, with long rows of flickering blue neon lights that wash out their faces and make their eyes sting.

They irritably file in and settle into smelly bowling shoes, sharing a platter of cheese curds and half-heartedly bowling to keep the manager off their asses as they argue. Luther determines that the best way for the family to be able to have their discussion is to give everyone a chance to speak that is determined on whose turn it is to bowl.

It’s an idiotic idea, and, being prone to idiocy themselves, it naturally leads to the most civil meeting they’ve had since before the Academy’s dissolution. No fists or vicious insults are thrown, and for the most part, they all sit, scowling at each other, all with their minds firmly made up and none willing to budge an inch.

Allison, for lack of an ability to speak, channels her energy into absolutely creaming her brothers at bowling, and Klaus forfeits his turns repeatedly to continue browsing the paper, as Luther and Diego butt heads pointlessly, being both in agreement about what should happen, and that the apocalypse is in fact still on, and that she will be the harbinger of it, but in disagreement as to how to go about stopping her. 

Allison, perched at Luther’s side, is tapping her notebook irritably with her pen, using her jacket as a cushion.

`She’s our sister,` she’s written, and Luther stares at her words morosely.

“We may not have a choice, Allison,” says Luther. “Five said the apocalypse was tomorrow, and you saw what she did to the house. It’s gotta be her who causes it. She’s angry, and she wants to let it out, and we can’t let that happen. How many other people could she hurt?”

“God, where  _ is  _ Five?” wonders Klaus, mostly to himself. 

Diego gnaws at his lip, feeling the urge to reach up and snipe at Luther, just because he can. But he can’t do that; Grace is  _ dead. _ She’s buried under that rubble, a twisted mess of crushed plastic and metal and wire and hardware shattered into tiny jagged chips they can never hope to reassemble, and  _ Vanya  _ had done that to her.

“She has to be stopped,” he says, and Luther frowns in confusion at him.

“Well. Seeing as they’re actually seeing eye-to-eye with each other, I guess it’s safe to assume that the world actually  _ is  _ ending,” says Ben to Klaus, who snorts.

“You got a problem?” asks Luther.

“No,” Klaus replies sincerely. He isn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect of putting his estranged sister down like a rabid dog, but if it’s the world or her, he’ll take the world. And besides, they were never close. That’s what he tells himself, to keep the visceral sense of wrongness at bay, the one all of them are grappling with, that Allison has taken to championing.

“How are we even going to find her though,” Luther frowns, “She could be anywhere.”

“Or…” Klaus stammers, folding back the newspaper to reveal Vanya’s face in newsprint, advertising her debut as the St. Pluvium Orchestra’s new first chair. “How about here? The Icarus Theater, in, what, about an hour? She’s supposed to play there.”

“Then that’s it then,” Diego says. “She’ll be there. Let’s go.”

Allison shakes her head, waving her notebook up again. She won’t budge.

Diego grimaces, begins pacing like a caged tiger, anxious to go  _ do. _

“Allison, please,” insists Luther, reluctant to leave her behind. “We’re the only ones capable of stopping this. And what’s more, we have a responsibility to Dad; he sacrificed everything to bring us back together. We have to make that  _ mean  _ something.”

“Oh, will you shut the hell up about Dad--”

“Yeah,” Klaus chimes in. “And you know what?”

“Oh, now is  _ not  _ the time,” Luther snaps. 

“Hey,” says Diego, “He saved my life today. Let him finish.”

Klaus shrugs. “You know, Diego, the real hero was Ben,” Klaus says, gesturing to, for all his family can tell, empty air.

Ben preens.

Everyone else gapes at him in expressions that ranged from mild disdain to utter contempt, for daring to bring Ben up in what they can only assume is yet another in a long line of jokes made in incredibly poor taste, seeing he has a notorious track record with them. 

“You are unbelievable, Klaus,” Luther hisses.

“Oh, you want proof? That it? Here!” Klaus snatches the lightest bowling ball from the rack, and waits for Ben to raise his arms excitably. “All right, showtime, baby. Now catch!”

The ball pounds into the floor, right through Ben, who throws up his hands in confusion, calling out to Klaus, “I don’t get it.”

Allison stares at it, rolling to a stop next to her foot, and shakes her head, looking up to give Klaus a glare of aloof disapproval, the kind that all women spontaneously manifest the moment they become mothers. 

Diego decides to stare at a children’s birthday party, several rows over, which is currently unveiling a store-bought cake, and he distracts himself by wondering what flavor it is. 

“Is there any way to silence that voice in your head that screams out to be the center of attention?” Luther snaps. 

“You know,” Klaus retorts, the words bursting out with a mad urge to sink into Luther’s skin and _bite,_ “I liked you a _lot_ better before you got laid.”

It’s a mistake.

He knows it as soon as he says it, knows it when he sees Luther’s face turn white, and Allison’s jaw set in a jealous simmer, when he realizes what he’s just caused between them.  Klaus throws up a hand in placation, stammering, “L-look, it’s not what it sounds like, Allison! He was so high he couldn’t tell _where_ he was--”

“Klaus,” hisses Diego into his ear.

“Yeah?”

“Stop.”

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll...” Klaus decides to start counting the stars in the tacky galaxy-patterned carpet.

The damage has been done; Allison huffs, and turns on her heel, storming out of the meeting, and off towards the concessions counter. Her hair, dyed greenish by the glare of the fluorescents, flies after her. Luther makes a soft, hurt noise, and hurries after her.

“Oh, great, thanks Klaus. Now Mom and Dad are fighting,” snipes Diego. He plucks the paper from where it’s laying, forgotten on the greasy plastic seat, “Where’s that theater again? I want to see about the drive there.”

* * *

“Listen, we can’t do this now,” he says, and Allison  _ hates  _ how right he is. She clutches her marker in her fist, clicking the cap slowly, again and again, staring at the fingerprints on the table she’s seated at.

She knows where her anger’s coming from; she is not naive: Once upon a time, when she and Luther had been children, they’d decided that they belonged to each other. They’d never said it aloud, not in words, but they’d made that promise nonetheless, bound it in golden chain and countless stolen looks.

At first, she doesn’t  _ understand  _ why this anger is roiling up in her, hot and bubbling and fierce, because she broke it  _ first.  _ She broke that promise when she left, and she broke it when she climbed into bed with every star she’s ever slept with in the years since, and she broke it when she said “I do.”

But then, she feels the itch of the bandages taped to her neck, scratching at her like an awful collar, and she knows.

_ One of us had to be good, _ she thinks bitterly, thinking quite seriously about digging her nails into her palms until they bleed.  _ It could never have been me. _

Luther is still talking, and Allison freezes when she hears what he says.

“I’d just found out that Dad sent me to the Moon for nothing.”

Allison blinks, turning slowly to regard him carefully.

She takes in his great, twisted shoulders, the tight, high-necked turtleneck clinging to his throat, where patches of discolored skin are showing through. And she thinks of him, dear, sweet Luther, sitting up in the cold void for years, dreaming about coming home.

_ Oh, _ she thinks.

“And I just felt so lost and alone.”

Allison knows what to do then, suddenly feeling all the bristling, conflicting emotions drain out of her, and replace with a serene calm.

The both of them are adrift in their own ways, dropped in the middle of a midnight sea and bobbing on the waves, staring around wildly for a strip of land to swim for, but finding only the dark, only the churning chaos of the waves, knocking them about. 

Maybe, they might find some peace together, before it all ends.

There is something that Allison needs to do, and he is the only person who she can trust to help her do it. So, she draws out her notebook, and writes:  `I need your voice.`

Out in the dark, grimy parking lot, they crowd into a phone booth littered with graffiti, with a floor coated in cigarette ash and an incredibly rusty door. There’s hardly any room to turn, and they are standing only an inch apart. Luther can hear the speaker dialing as Allison punches in her former husband’s phone number, has the receiver shoved up towards his mouth as the other line is picked up.

“Hello?” It’s a male voice, uncertain and a little tired-sounding. This, he assumes, is Patrick.

“Hi, this is, uh… I’m calling on behalf of Allison.”

“She’s there?”

“Yeah. She’s right here with me,” Wait. Shit, how does he explain why she  _ can’t speak? _ “Uh, she had to grab something real quick, and she  _ really  _ wanted to speak to Claire, so she had me pick up. She wants to tell her when she’ll be home.”

Patrick’s quiet for a while.

“Hello?”

A sigh, then: “Okay. Here. Give me a second.”

Luther offers the phone to Allison, and she takes it with a trembling hand. 

She leans into the speaker, and draws in a quick, choked breath.

It’s Claire, he assumes, correctly.

For the first time since the accident, Allison tries to talk.

It’s quick, more of an exhale in the shape of words, but he hears it perfectly, “Hi, baby.”

Then Allison pauses, flinches at whatever she’s just heard, and gestures quickly to Luther, handing the phone back to him.

He gets it: Claire didn’t understand her. That’s why he’s here.

“Hi, uh, Claire?”

“Hello?” At the sound of her voice, high and curious and a little uncertain, Luther’s heart skips a beat.

“Uh, yeah, this is your Uncle Luther.”

Claire cries out his old nickname in absolute jubilation, and the line goes fuzzy from the feedback for a moment. An enormous, sunny smile’s tugging at the corners of his lips.

Allison can hear her perfectly, and tears begin brimming in her eyes.

“You  _ know  _ who I am?” 

“Yeah, you know, I know  _ all  _ about you, too.” He watches Allison uncap her marker, and begin scrawling, stalls for time to let her figure out what to say. “And you know, Claire, I’ve been wanting to meet you since the day you were born.”

Claire gasps in delight on the other side of the line. 

“Your mom’s right here, and she has a… bit of a cold, so her voice is a little weird just now. Remember that? Yeah, that was her.”

“Tell Mommy I said get better soon!”

“Oh, of course I will.” 

Allison’s ready. She turns her notepad towards him.

“She wanted me to tell you, Claire…”

He looks at Allison’s words, and goes to read them aloud:  `I love you more than anything in the whole wide world. I am sorry that I’m not there with you, but it’s because I need to take some time to learn how to be the best Mom in the world to you, so I can love you even better than I already do. I am so sorry that I hurt you and Dad, and it is okay if you don’t forgive me. I promise I will do better so--`

\--He gets as far as the first sentence, jostling an inch to tilt the page up so he can read from the bottom of it better. Allison has had the same thought as he, and is moving to do the same.

He zigs, she zags, and they bump elbows, sending the notebook clattering from her hands and thumping into the tangled spot on the floor, where they’re treading on each other’s toes. 

They shuffle for a moment, Allison croaking out, _ “No,” _ as she realizes what hits him in the next second: They can’t bend over, can’t reach the door to squeeze out and grab it and shuffle back in without hanging up the phone, and they have no more quarters on them to feed to the machine. 

A shudder passes through her body, like glass, in the moment before it breaks. So Luther takes Allison’s shaking hand in his, lends his gaze to hers, and gives her something to steady herself with. “She says, ‘I miss you. I miss you every day that I’m not with you. I  _ know  _ that I let you down, but I would do anything for you. You make me want to wake up each day, and you’re in my dreams every night. You’re the most important person in the world to me.’”

He’s not saying this for Claire, not completely. But it’s exactly what she would’ve told her.

Allison stares at him, smiling through her tears. Here he is, the sweetest, kindest man she’s ever known; this heavy, warm feeling that’s making it hard to breathe is one she’s lived with for a long, long time, but it is the first time she’s named it since she’d left the house for Hollywood: she loves him. She loves him dearly, and she knows there’s no time, but she wants nothing more in the world than to take him home with her.

“She’ll be home soon,” he promises, and Allison screws her eyes shut, leaning her forehead against the glass of the booth, and feels her throat burn with each gasp she swallows, because she doesn’t know, she just  _ doesn’t know  _ if she ever will. 

He hands the phone to Allison, and Claire says goodbye to her, and please call tomorrow.

After Allison hangs up, she buries her face in her hands, and gasps heavily, her throat burning with every breath. 

She isn’t a good mother, but she’s finally ready to  _ try  _ to be.

And, well. If tonight’s truly it, then at least the last thing Claire will have heard from her is that she loves her, that she wants to come home to her, and that she intends to do better. 

Luther rests a gentle hand on her back, rubbing it slowly, until she gathers herself.

When she does, he follows her out of the cramped phone booth, into the run-down parking lot. 

“We need to get the others,” he says, gesturing back to the bowling alley entrance. “We need to get ready to move.”

Allison tenses, and pulls out her notepad. 

`I’m not coming.`

“You’re… not going to…” She doesn’t need to say anything else; he can guess. She’s not going with them to the Icarus, she isn’t going to participate in their plans to stop Vanya.

And… strangely, he’s accepting of it.

A part of Luther wants to decline, to insist that Allison remain with them always, but he looks at her, at the gray-blue tint to her lips from blood loss, at the way she’s still swaying, just a bit, as she’s standing before him.

She can’t fight, he knows, not until she heals. It’d be too dangerous for her to come with them.

“Okay,” he says, and Allison blinks in surprise, staring up at him with a raised eyebrow. 

“I almost lost you once, alright? I’m not about to lose you again.”

Allison nods, slowly. 

Then, she opens her notepad, and tries once more.

`Talk to her.`

“She’s beyond reasoning,” Luther replies, “Do you  _ honestly  _ think she’s gonna listen, after everything that’s happened? Think about it, Allison, what happened the last time you tried to do that?”

Allison reaches up, stroking the bandage at the front of her neck, and gets it. She doesn’t  _ like  _ it, but she gets it. 

She sighs, and scribbles down:  `5.`

Luther is quick to pick up on her meaning. “We need him. Think he’s gone back to the house by now?”

Allison shrugs, then it dawns on her:  `I’ll check.`

Luther reads what she’s written on the page, and what she hasn’t; he reads what’s between the lines and knows what she’s really saying: She can’t do this. She can’t come with them, to the Icarus, to kill their sister. She cannot kill her, and she cannot stand by and watch them do it, and she cannot stop them. 

So, he decides, maybe it’s best if she won’t be there at all, that she’ll stay away for a while. She can go to the ruin of their home, find Five, and bring him back to them. 

She won’t do it, and he won’t make her. This is a weight that his shoulders are strong enough to carry, that he and Diego and Klaus can bear on their own. It wouldn’t be fair to burden her with it. 

Luther tangles his fingers with hers, and squeezes her hand gently.

She squeezes back, and through his glove, he can feel that she’s rubbing the pad of her thumb over the back of his palm.

They let go at the same time, and Allison takes a few hesitant steps back, her jacket folded in her arms. She hasn’t turned away from him yet, is staring at him long and deep, memorizing each and every part of him.

He gets why. She’s worried he might not come back.

“Be safe,” he calls out, and she nods quietly, gives him a heavy look that he reads immediately:  _ You too. _

He watches her walk, with slow, purposeful strides, off towards the ruins of the house, watches her until she disappears around the corner, watches how she keeps almost turning her head to look back at him.

Then, he returns to his brothers, with a heavy weight in his chest, to prepare them for battle.

* * *

Vanya stares, long and hard at herself in the mirror, when she’s done preparing.

The suit she saves for performances is on, and for the first time, she doesn’t feel awkward in it, like she’s playing dress-up in a stranger’s clothes. The suit is not the problem; it is her face.

Vanya has painted her eyes black, adding more and more and more to cover the redness, the puffy lids. _ It won’t do, _ she’d thought,  _ with a spotlight on me, to be seen with a face that’s been marred by weeping. _

She’s a mess. She’d look a mess either way. 

She hasn’t hidden the puffiness at all, but drawn more attention to it, to the purplish bruise-like bags beneath her eyes, to the colorlessness of her face and the way she’s bitten her lips raw, and the strange way that she looks utterly blank, like she’s wearing her own face as a mask.

She looks empty, and she is empty. She’s been hollowed out and now there is nothing left in her but a single song she’s been practicing for days, and she has set her mind to doing it. 

Vanya is so,  _ so  _ tired, but her body has been moving on autopilot, changing into her suit, scrubbing over every surface in her apartment, cleaning out the refrigerator and the cupboards. She had to get everything together, before tonight, and so she sinks back into herself, and allows her worries to carry her through the hour. 

Vanya is tired, and she would like to be done.

And she  _ will  _ be done, soon; she can hear the sobbing of distant sirens, feels herself tense and her knuckles whiten as she grips her violin case.

They are coming for her, she knows. Not these sirens; they pass her apartment in a flash, but another set will be here soon enough.

She examines the fact with cold acceptance, looking around her apartment one last time before she leaves: The police will find out. She is the only person Leonard would have been with, and traces of her are all over his house. They will know it was her who had done it. 

And what’s more, her sister’s blood is smeared on his bathtub, and across her bowstrings. When they dig Allison out of the rubble, and see her wound, they will know who had inflicted it. When they look at what has happened, at how the Hargreeves house fell all at once, with each and every living heir inside, save one, who could not be accounted for at the time of their deaths, who had obviously murdered her boyfriend not even a day earlier, they’ll know.

Vanya will never be allowed to play in front of a crowd again, after tonight. Her life will be  _ over, _ after tonight.

And that’s alright.

She has nothing to lose anymore, no one who will miss her, and nothing to look forward to after tonight. She is tired, and she wants to go, and spend one infinite, starry moment as the center of attention, to have one moment that’s all hers, in which no one will dare turn the spotlight out on her.

And then she will be done with it.

Nothing will stop her from this; of this she is certain. 

Vanya will not attack indiscriminately; she has no reason to. All of that messy rage had crumbled with the house, and now she is left with nothing but resolve. She will play, no matter what. 

But she will not tolerate anyone standing in her way. She sends a car flying twenty feet in the air as it dares cut her off from her bus to the theater, stares viciously at a child who is looking covetously at her violin and dares her to take a step closer, and extend her fingers, so she might bite them off. This instrument is  _ hers, _ this night is  _ hers, _ and no one will take anything from her again.

Vanya’s coworkers regard her curiously as she joins them in silence, and she can sense the slight metallic tang of fear in the air, as they cluck among themselves, remarking at the rough dark smears over her eyes, at her ability to play at their lead.

She knows they haven’t exactly taken kindly to the thought of her stepping in so suddenly as first chair; she is good, and they know she is good, but she had never been particularly  _ spectacular, _ had been all technique and no expression.

She will change their minds tonight.

Vanya will be a spectacular concertmaster, leading her section with eloquence, playing her solos with grace and power. This is the last concert she shall ever play; it  _ must  _ be extraordinary, the likes of which will sear into her audience’s eyelids and become utterly unforgettable. 

She’ll be first chair for only a single performance, and it will be the greatest the world has ever known.

Vanya trods onto stage confidently, for the first time. Her hands aren’t shaking, there is no sweat trickling down the back of her neck; she has nothing to lose, and nothing to fear, and she feels nothing at all. 

Vanya takes her seat, at the forefront of the violin section, in the center of the spotlight, and bathes in its icy blue glow, drinking it in like a flower does the sun.

No one is trying to hide her away anymore. No one will ever do that again.

Everyone in the audience can see her,  _ everyone  _ in the audience...

… In the audience, there is a strip of six vacant seats.

Despite herself, Vanya’s eyes are drawn to it, despite herself, her heart becomes clenched in a chilled fist and her tired, tired eyes begin to spill over.

She bites down, on the inside of her cheek, hard, to force herself away from it, catching the tears before they brim over and closing her eyes for a long moment, to wash them away.

_ It is over, _ she thinks emptily, when she opens them again, staring up into the blinding blue shine of the spotlight.  _ It is over. _

Vanya draws out her bow, stares at the rusty spattering marring the horsehair, not daring to touch it, imagining what beautiful sound it might yield if she were to draw it across her own throat; surely, it would be an unforgettable performance, then. __

She will play herself out beautifully.

Vanya sets her violin neatly beneath her chin, moves her fingers into first position, and waits for her cue.

The conductor waves his silver wand.

And she begins.

The first curling line of the melody is familiar, the one she’s been working at for days, now springing from her fully-formed, written so carefully into her mind that she does not need the music in front of her to determine which notes to play. It is somber and plaintive, flowing exquisitely out of her and towards the audience, coiling into them and flaying them open and revealing their most secret, mournful hearts.

She isn’t even using her power at all; she is merely  _ playing, _ free of fear, free of the rot of doubt, free of repression. This is her last performance, and in her release, she finds an absolute sense of peace, and hovers within it, suspended above all the earth.

The orchestra crashes in, and she leads them perfectly.

The world has shrunk to just her and the notes she makes, and this concert, this suite, is the only thing that matters. She will play it, and none will interrupt her; if anyone dares, she’ll handle them herself. This is the only thing in the world that is hers now, and she will guard it viciously.

Of course, she is wrong. Someone dares to stop her.

Not one someone, but  _ two  _ someones, shapes she recognizes to be Luther and Diego, sprinting in from opposite ends of the stage to ambush her like a pair of wolves, as though she would not see them, as though she would not react to seeing their shadows streaking across the stage towards her.

But she does. Oh, she does.

Vanya catches them, sending them flying into the screaming crowd with a white blast of energy wrought forth by the power of her violin’s bow. 

They are here. They are  _ alive, _ they survived, so the others must have survived too.

So they are lurking, somewhere in the theater, and they have come for her.

And  _ there  _ they are, crawling to their feet out in the aisles, crying out to the audience,  _ her  _ audience, and waving them on as they scatter like rats towards the exits, away from her.

_ Why are you doing this, _ she thinks, from somewhere deep within herself,  _ why are you doing this?  _

She is stupid, for thinking it; that vicious instinct she had surrendered to, the one that is commanding her even now, had been  _ right. _

Her family had lived, and they are here, and they have come to take her audience, to make her alone again, to shove her back into the shadowed wings and shut her up, so they might silence her for good with no one to witness it.

Well.

She won’t let them.

Vanya grips her bow tighter, draws out a vicious blast of white brilliance and sends it streaking at her orchestra, cowering and hesitant, urging them to continue to play.

The last thing she has that is hers is this concert, is this solo, and neither hell nor high water will prevent her from completing it. 

* * *

Five returns from Gimbel Brothers’ in a flash, and finds himself stumbling into a delusion.

He blinks, and stares wildly around him.

He is in a dream, no, a  _ nightmare _ . 

The house is gone, replaced by mountains of rubble and ruin, the same sort of waste that had dominated the apocalypse.

… He was wrong. 

He was  _ wrong, _ and he’d missed such a massive, crucial detail. The house doesn’t fall with the rest of the world; it falls  _ before. _

He’s an idiot, a useless old cur, sniffing down all the wrong paths.

He’d wasted an entire  _ day, _ drinking to his own success, and now those lost hours are what’ll cost him the world.

Five falls to his knees, and buries his hands in the rubble, overturning handfuls of dust and plaster, glittering with motes of glass. His family is down there. His family is down there, and they are buried, and they may well be dead, and it is  _ his fault. _

Five lost his first lifetime to grief, was mourning for decades upon decades, a ghost amid the ruins.

He can’t do it again. He can’t.

Five’s breath leaves his lungs, and it doesn’t come back. He is choking, on dust, no, on hubris, no, on  _ ash, _ he can see it falling on him now, and he knows the overwhelming stench of death will be upon him in a moment, will knock him to the earth and knead the life from him, so he keeps reaching and reaching and  _ reaching  _ for a breath that he  _ cannot reach-- _

There’s movement.

And Five stills.

There is no ash snowing down on him; he is surrounded by swirling eddies of gray-brown dust, and the sky is clear and the moon is shining down upon him. There is no death-stench. This is not the apocalypse. This is his home. This is his home, and someone is alive in it, and it is not too late.

Five flies to his feet, follows the sound of shuffling, uncertain footsteps crunching over crumbling concrete. He drops low, keeps his feet light, and a creeping paranoia, one that tells him it may well be an assassin, urges him to reach for the gun at his side and…

He abandons that thought immediately, when he sees who it is, rounding a corner and staring down a slope of shattered brick at his sister, with her back to him. She’s alive, and unharmed and not even soaked in dust, clearly lost in thought. 

“Hey,” he says, the word echoing off the ruined walls.

Allison perks up, and turns, as he scrambles down to speak to her.

Here, among the rubble, Allison is exquisite, perched with perfect posture on a mahogany table that had somehow emerged from the mountains of brick, her legs hanging down and toes brushing lightly against the debris. Five has never seen her dressed down like this, not in sneakers and skinny jeans and a dust-stained pale pink t-shirt that hangs loosely off one smooth brown shoulder, the brightly-striped outline of a sports bra plainly visible. Her jacket is folded across her lap, and she is toying with the zipper with her fingers. If she’s cold, she shows no sign of it. Her eyes are red and smeary, and there’s a deep furrow in her brow.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, and he means it. It’s good that she’s alive, that she’s awake.

She looks at him expectantly, and he realizes she has been waiting for him.

Allison reaches down, and extracts a notepad from the folds of her jacket, flipping it open. She’s already written something down, has something of a script prepared.

`Vanya has powers.`

_ “What?” _

Allison reaches up, to the bandage taped securely across her throat, and taps it lightly, staring at Five with a pained quirk to her lip. 

“You don’t mean…”

Five thinks back to the previous night, to finding Allison sticky with blood and clinging to life, to glancing at Klaus to see if he’d caught a glimpse of her ghost in the room with him. To holding her wound closed with his bare hands as Grace worked on it, and feeling her pulse tapping weakly against his fingers.

To think that  _ Vanya  _ had done that… Five’s knees feel weak all of a sudden, like he’s stepped onto the shore after a year at sea, and he sinks down beside her to sit.

Allison turns another page.  `My fault.`

Five exhales. “Alright… that’s…” 

Allison taps her notepad.  `She blew the house up.` She turns a page.  `Killed Pogo. Grace dead, everyone else is alive / unharmed. ` Turns another.  `They went after her. I’m here for you.`

He nods, numbly, his chest turning cold.

“Well, what  _ happened? _ Do you know? How’d...” He can’t find the right words.

`They locked her up. Big mistake. She broke out.`

_ “What?” _

Allison sighs. She points to her neck again.

“But she didn’t mean to.”

Allison pulls a marker out from where it’s resting behind her ear, and circles `big mistake` . 

Five hums.

It’s so much to think about. Vanya had killed Pogo. She’d killed Grace. She’d slit Allison’s throat, she’d… He thinks back to Jenkins’s house, to the sheer number of knives thrust through the man’s chest, to the hurricane of shattered glass and china and splintered wood.

That was  _ her, _ wasn’t it?

He stares around them, at the ruins of their home, and remembers what he’d mistaken them for, only a few minutes ago. 

And he realizes.

“It’s her,” he breathes. “She causes the apocalypse.”

Allison starts to cry.

There’d been a time, in the nebulous, misty memories he has of being four or five, when they’d been each other’s favorites. She’d even been his first kiss, if he remembers correctly. He and Allison had been tossed together by their father because they were willful, selfish creatures brimming with confidence, who’d needed to be monitored carefully, lest they break out and run wild or concoct a way to rule the world, and at first, they’d taken to each other quite well, but soon enough, they’d soured to each other. 

Perhaps, if he hadn’t lost interest in the Academy experiment as early as he did, they’d have stayed close. Perhaps they’d have learned to enjoy how similar they are to each other, rather than shying away from those commonalities. Perhaps they could have sanded each other’s sharp edges down, and held each other accountable.

But they didn’t.

“We’ve made such a mess of things, you and I.”

Allison hangs her head.

She flips back to the earlier page, points to  `My fault.`

“No,” says Five, but Allison’s raising a hand to silence him.

She flips to a fresh page in her notebook, and scratches something, turning the page towards him and looking away, as if she can’t bear to look at what she’s written.

`I rumored her. Told her she’s just ordinary.`

Five’s blood chills.

“How old were we?”

She holds up four fingers, and Five sighs.

“Dad had you do it, didn’t he.” It isn’t a question.

`Still did it.`

“We were so  _ young, _ Allison. You can’t have known what you were doing.”

Allison’s face crumples, and she smears the tears from her face quickly.

`Does it matter? We were all terrible to her. Our whole lives.`

“Oh come on now, you know Dad got us started on that,” Five begins, but then he pauses. Allison hasn’t stopped writing, yet.

`You weren’t.`

Five stiffens. Because it’s true, isn’t it?

`Why?`

Five’s mouth opens, then closes.

He’s nearly a stranger to his softer feelings, he’s had to be, to survive the life he’s been forced to live, but he is not naive. He knows what she’s implying, knows the way her brow is knit and the soft, empathetic look in her eyes. He can feel the stubborn, persistent eidolon of that truth pressing in on him, and he turns away, stares down at the dust coating his uniform, at his shredded knees and scraped, stinging hands. He’s covered in waste again, choking on it.

He can’t let that ghost in. He can’t. What would be the  _ point, _ when he’d exorcised it the moment he ran out that door? When tonight, it’ll all end?

“It’s not true,” he says to himself, and then, to her: “You see? It’s not true, because I  _ left.” _

He left.

Decades ago, he was thirteen and consumed by pride and pompousness, and he’d strapped on his waxen wings and gone flying right into the sun and burned everything right up, and he’s been in freefall ever since.

Days ago, he was fifty-eight, home at last but not humbled in the slightest, so obsessed with searching for the answer that he’d been blind to it, sitting right there, across from him, on that very first night he’d returned, on the morning after, on every day since until now.

All he had ever had to do was stay.

If Vanya is the gun that causes the apocalypse, then perhaps, in his leaving, he had pulled the trigger. Perhaps, in their cruelty, learned or chosen, each and every one of his siblings had too.

Allison reaches for her notepad. 

`Can’t stay here. They need us.`

Five scoffs. Something has ruptured in him, something is broken and the jagged edges are tearing into his insides.

“I’ve been thinking about this day for most of my adult life. Returning to a time when I could see you all alive again, change the course of history. You know, I thought I’d… I  _ never  _ thought I’d have to...”

He can’t say it.

Kill.

He has to kill Vanya.

He has to kill  _ Vanya. _

His eyes are burning, and his breaths are short; it is difficult to breathe with the weight of the world bearing down on his shoulders, and he knows it is pressing in on Allison’s as well. They are both their father’s children, trained from birth for this very night, for this very purpose.

_ We have to do it, _ they are thinking.  _ We have to do it. We don’t know how to do anything else, there’s no more time and we have to do it. _

The two of them, of like hearts, are also of like minds when it comes to their father; they, like the rest of their litter, are lost in his shadow, incapable of stepping out into the sunlight. That will take time, and time is something that they are certain that they do not have anymore. One of their greatest fears is before them now, a loathsome wraith, rattling a laugh in their ears: They are  _ always  _ going to do exactly what Dad would do. 

“We have to stop her,” Five says mechanically.

Allison sighs, forcing herself to her feet, unfolding her black jacket carefully, sliding her arms into it, and zipping it up tight. She makes a movement with her arm;  _ follow me, _ she is saying,  _ I’ll take you to her. _

Five obeys, the weight of the gun he’d stolen from the Handler sagging heavily at his side.

They pick their way out of the carcass of their old home, hand in hand at first, to guide each other over the jagged edges, and they begin the walk to the Icarus Theater, each step more laborious than the last, each step bearing them closer to the end.

* * *

Lookout duty sucks.

It’s dull, and it’s  _ boring  _ and it sucks.

Even on tonight, of all nights, with the end nigh as can be, Klaus still fucking hates it, spends a solid twenty minutes sitting on the curb, feeling the cold of the concrete seep through the leather of his pants to make his ass numb, ranting to Ben about it.

Ben, to his utter annoyance, is being unhelpful, chirping away like an insufferable Jiminy Cricket about how  _ we have to take this seriously, Klaus, they’re depending on us, Klaus, they could die in there and all we have to do is sit out here and make sure nobody crazy breaks in, and it’s quite literally the safest, easiest job we could possibly do, Klaus _ .

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

Jeez. Half the time, Klaus wonders if he gets high just to get a break from him, to get some peace and fucking quiet.

He’s joking.  _ Honest. _

Really though. Ben’s been especially cagey these past few days, has been stalking off and snapping at him more often than not. Once this apocalypse mess is over, he’s sure it’ll settle down. They’ll have time then, to smooth whatever rough patch this is out, to play with his power and drag Ben into the realm of the living. Maybe once he’s there, he’ll find a hobby that doesn’t consist of trailing after him and being a buzzkill. That’d be fantastic.

Or, he supposes, if things go sideways or upside-down in there, they’ll both be dead then, and they can drift aimlessly across the cinder of the world together. Maybe find Dave, he’d like to find Dave.

Klaus groans, and taps his shoes aimlessly against the pavement, peering around curiously for anything worth seeing.

And there’s nothing worth seeing. 

Sure, there’d been that moment a crowd of fine people, dressed to the nines, came pouring from the doors like they were racing for the last train out of hell, and sure, Klaus may have cowered between a fire hydrant until they all left, and  _ sure, _ he’d spent an entertaining few minutes picking through the jewelry and wallets they’d dropped on the sidewalk like a magpie, but it’s not like he found anything to his taste.

And sure, there’d been that hit-and-run about a block up, if one could call ejecting one’s passenger through the windshield and then positively booking it down the street and around a corner, leaving her twitching, half-unconscious body in the middle of the street, a hit-and-run. Maybe a reverse-hit-and-run? He should ask Ben, when he’s in a better mood.

But his point stands: It’s boring. 

Absolutely nothing has happened in the last ten minutes, and he’s fairly certain that his ass is falling asleep. There is nothing for him to do out here, and he knows it; the only danger is inside, and it is decidedly not his problem, according to their dear leader.

So, Klaus springs up, and makes for the food truck parked a slight ways down the street, reaching for the cash he’d nicked from a discarded wallet, picking through until he finds the right note. 

Ben follows him, as sticky as his shadow, and continues droning on and on.

Chirp, chirp, chirp. Blah blah blah.

Yeah, he’ll take the rice burrito please. Extra lime. 

“Klaus?” Ben says.

Klaus takes quick, short bites, desperate to keep the burrito’s contents from spilling out over his hands, and frowns at the taste. “Hey, did I ask for cilantro? I don’t think I did.”

“Klaus,” Ben hisses.

Klaus stares at the label on the food truck.  _ Authentic, _ his ass.

_ “Klaus!” _ Ben shouts, an inch from his face, voice pounding into his eardrum.

“WHAT?” Klaus shrieks back.

Food Truck Guy, watching his customer begin shrieking into midair, quickly rolls the window shut, and decides that maybe he’ll park somewhere else for the rest of the night.

“Behind you!”

Klaus turns, mouth hanging open and…

Sees a steady stream of armed gunmen, sprinting smoothly in with their weapons drawn, masked eyes glowing wolfishly.

Well...  _ fuck? _

Luther was right. They  _ did  _ need a lookout. 

His bad.

“Who the hell  _ are  _ these guys? What’s with the masks?”

“Does it matter? They’re clearly here for us.”

“How do  _ you  _ know that, maybe they’re here for the music.”

Ben glares at him.

“I’m joking. Okay? Can I make jokes? Is that allowed?”

The typewriter-key clacking of gunfire begins rattling within the theater’s walls, the sound sending a chill down Klaus’s spine.

Okay. Yeah, no. They need to get in there.

Klaus takes off in a sprint, burrito still clutched in his hand. “Come on, man, we’re the damn lookouts!”

Inside, the Temps Commission’s finest squad of foot soldiers pours into the auditorium, guns drawn. They’ve got their mark in range; somewhere among the velvet seats is the person who’d swallowed the tracker they were ordered to trace, and, told to be as decisive as possible, they begin spraying indiscriminately across the auditorium.

Diego and Luther, searching for the last straggling audience members, immediately dive to the floor, and stare at each other in absolute confusion, before setting to work on dispatching their fresh batch of foes.

The St. Pluvium Orchestra, driven wild with fear, decide that fear of death by bullet eclipses death by energy blast, and scatter, screaming, into the wings and down into the aisles, sprinting as fast as their feet can carry them.

Vanya doesn’t seem to notice at all, or having noticed, does not care. A pulsating glamour hangs about her head, making the space beyond her stage shimmer like a mirage, the sounds fading to distant echoes bouncing down a long dark hallway. She is in a bubble of sound, made by the mournful melody of her playing, and it doesn’t matter at all, what’s happening out there. Nothing matters, only  _ she  _ matters, only her  _ music  _ matters.

Her audience is gone, her orchestra is gone, her suite is ruined, but she is still standing in the blue shine of the spotlight, still illuminated, still playing.

Vanya stares down at her bow, ruddy with her sister’s blood, sawing across her violin’s strings.

She can’t stop. She’s done so much, she’s come so far, and she must continue. 

She can’t stop now, you see, she’s never played so well in her  _ life, _ she’s  _ glowing, _ she’s only  _ just  _ become a  _ star. _

Bedlam erupts around her, and Vanya plays on, weaving her notes through the deafening percussion of the gunshots, feeding them into her song as well as she is able.

As she plays, she’s sinking into herself again, the waves of power crashing over her head to wash into her limbs and puppet her numb fingers, to burn through her skin and her suit and her hair until she feels nothing,  _ nothing  _ but the cold of the abyss deep within her.

_ I am drowning, _ she thinks. _ I am drowning again and all of these people are seizing my head and holding me under whenever I try to surface, so I may as well swim for the bottom with my mouth wide open. They will not force me to drown; I will choose it. _

She screams, from deep, deep within her, but the dark space in which she’s sunk is so, so quiet that no one can hear her.

So she takes that scream, and weaves it into her song. The world trembles at the sound, as it should.

* * *

The Icarus Theater waits for them, crouching like a monster, and there’s something deeply uncanny about it, with the doors flung open and all the lights blown out, glass twinkling like stars in the street among scattered purses and programs and stray shoes left by fleeing theatergoers. It takes Five a moment to put his finger on it, but once he has, he cannot shake the feeling: the building itself is  _ parturient, _ swollen and shuddering and leaking trails of water from burst pipes through the lobby.

Inside its walls, something awful is about to be born.

Five and Allison steal inside slowly at first, and then all at once, when the rattle of automated gunfire, and the high, inhuman shriek of a monstrous creature that’s somehow deeply and terribly  _ familiar  _ rings out through the vacant reception hall, bouncing off the marble to shine a beacon their way.

They enter the great auditorium, and Allison, a foot ahead of him, skids to a halt, snatching Five by the back of his jacket and hauling him like a troublesome child behind a row of seats.

He’s about to hiss at her for daring to touch him, to shake loose of her grip, when he sees it.

Their brothers are scattered among the seats of the auditorium, crouched and cowering, and they aren’t alone; all along the mezzanine and balconies, and scattered among the rows of seats are a slew of armored assassins he knows with absolute certainty to be Temps agents, knows from the luminous red eyes of their gas masks that they’re a death squad, sent to exterminate the lot of them for daring to interfere with the apocalypse. Some are dead, splayed out in the aisles, or hanging over brass-railed balconies, and some remain, spraying bullets down into the theater below. 

And in the center of them all, for the first time in his life, Five sees a ghost. 

It’s Ben.

It’s  _ Ben, _ roaring, his monsters exposed and whipping viciously through the air, nimbly snatching their assailants from the upper floors and twisting them roughly along their spines to pop them in two, as though they were action figures.

It’s  _ Ben, _ blue and bright, with the crouched shadow of Klaus just beyond him, pale light pouring out from his fists, crying out in triumph.

Five’s fears melt away at the sight of him, and for a moment, he’s lost to a bright burst of wonder blossoming in his chest, his mouth falling open in an awestruck smile. Their long-dead brother is  _ here, _ has  _ been  _ here all along. The things he wants to  _ tell  _ him.

He’s flickering. Ben is sputtering and fading out of existence, and beyond them, Klaus is groaning from exertion, dropping down to palm at the ground with his hand wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. There’s a wild, bright smile on his face; he’s  _ done  _ it.

Ben is gone, but the blue shine remains; the entire theater is cast over in a net of wavering strands of icy blue light, as though they’ve been submerged in a moonlit sea, and he is staring up at the shivering ripples from below. It’s disorienting, making his vision swim, and Five winces.

Beside him, Allison wipes the tears from her eyes, lunging from by his side, and army-crawling out to a fallen assassin not far from them, tearing his machine gun from under his leaking corpse. She moves quickly, using the firearms training they’d all been given when they were ten, falling into muscle memory as she begins picking off the agents on the ground. She doesn’t have to worry about accuracy, only squeezes the trigger down and lets a spray of antique bullets sputter out at once, catching the last line of stunned assassins entirely by surprise. The moment they’re all down, Allison tosses the gun aside with disgust.

_ Oh, _ he thinks.  _ Thanks. _

For a moment, Five’s hearing fizzles out, courtesy of the deafening rattle of Allison’s gun, so when their brothers crawl up from different hiding places throughout the theater, he nearly leaps out of his skin.

Diego materializes at his side, having sprinted in from a side exit, panting and shaken enough for Allison to reach out to steady him. Despite their dire situation, Klaus is smiling, giddy with wonder at what he’s just discovered he can do, and flush with excitement about the potential he’s discovered within himself. Luther reaches out to brush a gentle hand to Allison’s shoulder, looking at her questioningly. He knows she disagrees with them, but something settles in him at the thought that she had chosen to come, that they are all together again.

Then, Five’s ears stop ringing from the pound of gunfire, and a new sound seeps in to replace it: the high, tinny cry of a single violin. It had been playing all along, sawing away under the drumming of the gunfire. 

They turn, slowly, terrified of what they’re about to see, yet bound by a deep, horrible enchantment that compels them to turn and stare nonetheless.

On the stage itself, a line of slender pillars that, upon the sight of them, strikes Five with a pang of terrible recognition: He has been in this very spot, forty-five years ago, and he will  _ be  _ in this very spot tomorrow. This is the stage on which the world ends, the scene in which his siblings will die.

And taking center stage, at long last in the starring role, there she is.

Five gapes at the sight of her, at the mist of pearl-colored light emanating from her skin, bleaching into the fabric of her suit and the wood of her instrument and through the roots of her hair, staining it an eerie shade of silver-white. Vanya is haloed in unbearable power, lit from within by her rage made manifest. 

Five has known the warm, gentle way of her trust, of calloused fingers and a soft voice, of sandwiches delivered at midnight and bandaged arms and a bright, shining laugh he’s only heard a handful of times in his life; he’s known it, he’s  _ dreamed  _ of it, he’s carried the memories within him for years, determined to never let them slip through his fingers even once.

He has never before felt the freezing cold fire of her fury, and it washes over him all at once like a living wave, a vibrating sonic cloud of anger. It’s almost unimaginable, yet here it is before him. Here  _ she  _ is, a blooming blue-white star, a point of piercing radiance with the air itself roiling like the underside of a storm-tossed sea, carrying her song out to shake them where they’re standing.

Vanya had come to the Icarus Theater to perform, to be seen and heard and appreciated, to be a  _ star. _

That is over now; even in her near-somnambulant daze, she knows this. What is the point of playing at all, if none who are listening will appreciate the music, if they’ll just cut in before her solo reaches its crescendo?

The best she can do now, in the face of such a deplorable audience, is bring down the house just to spite them.

That, if nothing else, is exactly what she intends to do.

She had failed to bury them before, and so she will try again, this time with as much of her power as she is able to muster, so she might well and truly do it this time. She knows now, she knows better, she knows that she will never be safe with them, that they hate her, that they are no different from Dad, that they want her quiet and harmless and out-of-the-way and dead, and here they are, doing exactly that.

She can’t let them do it. She  _ can’t. _ She knows what it will cost her, and does not care; Vanya will entomb herself alongside her siblings with a smile, if it means she can drag them howling down to hell with her. 

Vanya draws back her bloodied bow, and sharpens her notes. 

_ They don’t get to win, _ she is thinking, over and over, a record skipping and scratching over the same lyrics,  _ they don’t get to win again. _

A shower of plaster rains down on the five of them, sending them scurrying apart like rats into the rows of vacant seats.

All around them, the theater itself is trembling, cracks snaking their way up wide pillars, seats that were bolted to the floor clapping in steady, strange waves, the glass dome above crackling like ice.

They all know it; they must act, or the theater will fall.

Diego cries out, but his words are lost by a chunk of resplendently patterned ceiling that shatters not a foot in front of him. Nonetheless, Five can read his lips well enough:  _ Vanya won’t move _ .

It’s true. She is so reluctant to step out of the blue circle the spotlight’s cast onto her, that it is as though someone had slipped onstage during the chaos and nailed her feet to it.

“All the better for us,” says Luther, as the group crawl out from their hiding places, to nestle behind a pillar and plot the death of their sister. “It gives us a chance.”

“We do it again, you mean?” asks Diego. “That’s how you wanna end this thing?”

“Do  _ what  _ again?” asks Klaus.

“We charged her,” says Diego. “His idea.”

Beside them, Allison is sawing her arms back and forth in a ridiculous motion that Luther somehow immediately translates: “The violin, yeah. See that?” He points. “It’s like her lightning rod. We have to get it away from her.”

“By charging her?” Klaus asks.

“We’re all together now, don’t you see?” says Luther, “It’ll work this time; she can’t stop  _ all  _ of us. We come at her from all angles, and one of us has a chance to get through.”

The pillar they’re hiding behind begins to splinter.

“It’s a suicide mission,” Klaus is saying, mostly to himself, eyes glazed over and misty, but nodding. 

“Look at this place, she’ll kill us any minute now, there  _ is  _ no time,” insists Diego.

“We have to act  _ now, _ and this is it,” urges Luther, “Are you all with me?”

Diego and Klaus both affirm him.

Five casts a long glance in Vanya’s direction.

But he nods. They have a mission to complete, and there’s never enough time.

“Allison?”

She’s staring at Vanya with an utterly heartbroken look in her eyes.

_ “Allison.” _

She turns, and a change passes over her face. 

At this moment she is thinking:  _ No. No, we don’t have to do it. Dad is not here. No one is forcing us anymore; this is a choice we are making freely, and we don’t  _ have  _ to do it, so we  _ shouldn’t.  _ If we die, then we must die as ourselves. _

She crosses her arms, and shakes her head. She keeps eye contact with Five the entire time as she does it.  _ It’s different for you, _ she’s thinking, knowing in a strange, marrow-deep way that if anyone can stop this, it’s him.

Luther sighs beside him, but nods indulgently. He can’t deny Allison anything, even now, at the end of the world. He said he wouldn’t make her do this, and he won’t.

Then, he claps his hands together, drawing his brothers’ attention, and directing them towards their sister. Luther barks out quick orders, one to stage left, one to stage right, one down the center, and Five’s brothers leap to obey, relieved to be absolved of the guilt of the decision.

Five moves with them, zombie-like, feeling Allison’s stare burning into his back, feeling his limbs move from somewhere outside his body,  _ knowing  _ deep in his bones that what he is doing cannot possibly work.

Sure enough, it doesn’t.

He doesn’t see it coming, so much as he  _ feels  _ it: a prickle of energy skittering up his spine, like the split second between the moment a bolt of lightning bears down from the clouds and spears its earthbound victims.

And in that split second, Five leaps through a hole in space, and out of the bolt’s reach.

He lands on the stage, skidding to a halt, close enough to reach out with his arms and touch Vanya, whose back is to him, who doesn’t seem to realize he is behind her at all.

Five is _here_ , on the stage where Vanya ends the world, where his siblings die, and he remembers, quite suddenly, that charred, small body, so blackened and deformed that it had been impossible to know whose it had been. The one that had fallen apart in his hands, sifting through his fingers in a crumble of charcoal.

_ It was you, wasn’t it,  _ he thinks.  _ You were there. You’d been there the entire time, and I didn’t even realize. _

The last piece falls into place, and suddenly Five can see the apocalypse unfolding before his eyes: in the world where he never returns, where the family had no idea of the impending doomsday, where Allison’s voice is intact, Vanya is alone with Jenkins, is turned against the family, arrives at the house intending to kill them, and succeeds in destroying the house, but not them. In that other world, she is performing, and his family burst in to confront her and her lover. Luther pops Jenkins like a grape, and in a rage, Vanya engulfs them all in snow-white flame.

So much has changed. So  _ little  _ has changed. They’re still in the exact same place, driving down the exact same road to the exact same destination.

Ahead of him, his brothers are caught in Vanya’s orbit, suspended in a web of light, held up by their hearts. She is drawing the life from them, a white electric whip of energy pulsing with each quick beat. Their faces are warped, eyes screwed shut and mouths twisted into grimaces, or else hanging open in silent screams. 

She’s killing them. Of course she is; get too close to a star, and you’ll burn right up.

The gun he’d stolen from 1955, which itself had been stolen from 1945, is now in his hand, and he is raising it, holding it directly to the back of Vanya’s head, close enough to brush the strands of her unbound silver-stained hair.

Staring down the barrel, remembering what it had been used for, what act of killing had distinguished it enough to the Handler to make it worthy of collection, what heinous sort of equivalence he would make by using it on Vanya now, Five feels a visceral stab of disgust in his gut and he hates this, he  _ hates  _ this,  _ he hates this. _

Staring down the barrel, remembering what he had last done when trapped between a rock and a hard place, remembering the circumstance that had led to his obtaining this weapon in the first place, it dawns on him all at once: Why should he  _ ever  _ have to choose between two horrific options, when he can make his own?

Staring down the barrel, Five remembers the apocalypse. The smoldering, ash-entombed wasteland he had emerged into, Vanya’s rage made manifest and finally set loose. He remembers the choking heat, the savage snowy winters, the… way that first blue flash of sky peered through the smog, and got bigger and bigger, about thirty years in, the way the grass poked eagerly out of the earth, soon after, the way Five could see songbirds flitting in the sky, even later. All it had ever taken was time, and life had started again. All it would have ever taken was  _ time, _ and he has none of it, he has...

How  _ stupid  _ has he been? 

Five has been haunted for forty-five years, for a  _ lifetime, _ stalked by a nameless, shapeless specter, ever-present in the corner of his vision, never a thing he’s been able to bear more than a glimpse of. Here, at the end of the world, he finally has it within him to turn and look that relentless phantom deep in the eye, and recognize it for what it is, for what it could have been... and, he realizes, if they only  _ try, _ for what it  _ might yet be. _

Five allows it to possess him utterly, to tear its way into him and root itself into his calloused, malformed heart, to catch it and hold it and breathe new life into it. He  _ has  _ to,  _ don’t you see? _

Five chokes on the words, before he can say them. He draws in a sharp breath, feeling the quivering of his lungs acutely, the sound gathering in his chest and rumbling like the last high, piercing note before the tumble down a scale. 

He doesn’t speak it, so much as he  _ breathes  _ it, like a secret.

“You know something, Vanya?”

There’s an almost imperceptible tilt to her head, and he knows that somewhere, from deep in that abyss that’s opened up within herself, Vanya has turned her face up towards the light, and she has heard him.

He says the rest in his head, can’t say it in front of everyone, even at the end of the world. He says it to himself,  _ for  _ himself:  _ I always loved you. _

Five’s hand has never been steadier than it’s been in this moment, when he slides the barrel an inch to the right.

Here is the apocalypse. Here is the gun, and here is Five, pulling the trigger.

The spell that had come over the auditorium is broken, then. What happens next occurs over the span of seconds.

The blast, flashing over the shell of her ear.

The light pouring from her, suddenly stoppered.

His brothers, plummeting to the ground, Allison sprinting up the aisle beyond them.

And Vanya, suddenly going loose and languid, her instrument slipping from her limp fingers. Her eyes rolling back, then her head, then her neck and chest.

The beam of brilliance, springing forth from her body, piercing through the glass dome and lancing out into the moonlit sky.

Vanya falls.

And Five catches her in his arms, her weight bearing him down to the stage floor. He cradles her carefully, like she’s a wisp of glass that he’d nearly let slip from his hands, like if she were to break, there’d be no replacing her.

Allison is by his side, then. She’s leapt onto the stage, crawling across it and knocking past where the gun has clattered to the ground, forgotten. She slides up beside him to help him hold her, to gently shift her weight from where it’s gathered in his arms to her own, so she might take on some of the burden herself, so she might smooth Vanya’s hair and check her breathing.

He lets her. Five gently pulls back, as their brothers charge up to join them. 

It’s so quiet all of a sudden, so when Luther cries out, “Is she alive?” it booms around them, and the subsequent gasps and exhales of relief upon Allison’s nodded confirmation, that yes, she will be just fine, rumble like thunder off of the walls. 

Luther settles in beside Allison, nuzzling her gently as she begins crying in relief, and Five steps away. 

He should be exhausted, yet he feels the opposite. He’s wired, alive, every nerve in him set alight and flowing with newfound purpose, with hope in the thought that their broken world might yet be whole again. Why should he  _ ever  _ have to choose between Vanya and the world, when he could have always had  _ both? _

The doors to the future have opened, and the path to it stretches all the way to forever, and for the first time, Five feels as young as he looks.

“Uh, guys?”

It’s Klaus, pointing into the air.

Five turns, peers up at where Klaus is looking and,  _ fuck. _

Through the hole Vanya had blasted in the roof, they have a perfect view into the black dome of the night sky, of the great silver disc of the moon, which has gone molten and crackling, as though it were being melted down in a forge. One great, jagged, searing chunk pries loose, and begins roaring down to them, growing and growing in size until it's eclipsed the size of the moon, and has cast a harsh fiery light down upon them, painting their shadows starkly. When it lands, he knows, it will burn the world into a cinder.

It’ll be upon them in minutes, maybe less.

“Oh, God,” breathes Luther. He knows it too, all of them do.

They haven’t stopped the end of the world; for all of their trouble, they’ve failed. 

“So this is it, huh… So much for…” Klaus trails off, tugging thoughtfully at his dog tags. He’s quick to fold, to throw his arms open and allow the end to come. What does he have to fear of death, being one who knows better than anyone in the world what comes after it?

Diego, beside him, shakes his head, choking on his own bitterness. “If only Sir Reginald could see us right now, huh? The Umbrella Academy: a total failure.”

Luther folds his hands before him, staring up at the site of his exile, raging down to reclaim him. “At least we’re together at the end.” It’s a comforting thought, one that rolls through him with absolute calm, like the tide up a beach; there is nothing in the world he loves more than his family, and in the most secret space of his heart, he knows that he’s always wanted to die surrounded by them. 

Beside him, Allison only has eyes for Vanya, content to die as herself. 

Five looks at them all, at how easily they’ve hung their heads and accepted defeat, how  _ easily  _ they’ve decided that the world is well and truly done for.

But he  _ can’t. _

“This doesn’t have to be the end,” he says, believing it firmly, holding tight to his hopes.

His brothers turn and stare at him.

“We use my ability to time travel,” Five explains, “But _this time,_ I’ll take you with me.”  
“You can _do_ that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it before.” 

The possibilities rip through his mind: He could lose grip of them, sending them flying into other timelines, scatter them decades or lifetimes or eons apart, shear them all into ribbons of atoms through the sheer force of the leap. Or, he could simply jump, and they would not be carried with him at all. He’s only leapt with Delores after all; they are made of softer stuff than she, and there are so many of them.

But he has to try. It’s the principle of the thing: there is a chance, so they  _ must  _ take it.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” shrugs Diego, inviting the wrath of God through the invocation of such a loaded phrase.

“Well,” Five says, “You’re looking at it. A 58-year-old man inside a child’s body.”

Diego goes pale, imagining the absolute nightmare of being slingshotted into the depths of puberty, and for a split second, contemplates death as an acceptable alternative. 

“We’re doing it,” says Luther decisively, and he looks to each and every one of them, stirring in them the choice to come along. Not a single one of them hesitates when his gaze finds them; every last one of them wants earnestly to live. Even Ben, who Luther asks about specifically, is in agreement.

It’s decided.

Five orders Luther to hoist Vanya’s limp form into his great arms, and has them all file into formation. 

As Luther shuffles Vanya gently into place, aided by Allison’s careful hands, it occurs to him: what would stop Vanya from simply causing further destruction, wherever they emerge? Don’t they have a responsibility, to prevent any further harm from befalling the world? 

He voices that worry: “Wait, should we be taking her? I mean, if she’s the cause of the apocalypse, isn’t that like taking the bomb with us?” 

Five, still deep in denial about the weights each and every one of them carry, knowing nothing about how little he understands them, replies: “The apocalypse will always happen, and Vanya will always be the cause, unless we take her with us and fix her.”

There is no such thing as a lost cause; Five believes it firmly, that all one has to do is  _ try _ , and so they will. All it had taken was time for life to find its way back after her apocalypse. All they’ve ever  _ needed  _ was time. There’s so much he needs to learn, so much  _ all of them _ must learn, and they will have all the time in the world to do it. They’ll save her, and by doing so, they’ll save themselves.

Around him, each and every one of his siblings nods, clasping hands, casting reassuring glances at one another. Five closes his hands around those of Diego and Allison, and grits his teeth, reaching deep for that internal well of power he possesses and drawing as much of it into his hands as he is able.

The earth is rumbling beneath their feet, the last sputtering bulbs still intact in the theater flickering off. The apocalypse has made landfall, and is roiling towards them, burning the world in its wake. 

Five presses harder. He will carry them to safety, or they will turn to ash, hand in hand. 

He feels the folds of space begin to bend before him, and he pushes further, reaches for the tapestry of time and tears a hole through it, reaching blindly, desperately for any point in time that might take his hand and pull him through.

It finds him, a time that recognizes him, that  _ knows  _ him, that he has been to before during his travels. It feels him grasping, and it reaches back, catching him by the fingers and tugging him in.

Time itself stretches and coils before them in a million bright, sharp fractals, trailing off into infinity. The brilliant white light of the space between space, of the time between time, begins washing over them, and each of his siblings stares, mystified, up into the glow, across at each other wide-eyed, watching their hair stand on end and silver static skitter over their arms.

Time reaches down with a cold, electric hand, lifting him, and each of his siblings into itself, reaching down to bear them up and away before the first of the flames reach them, sweeping them up so they might try again. 

Each of them holds tighter and tighter to one another’s hands, as they’re drawn up and scattered into the past, so they might try again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. This fic is pretty much just a novelized version of S1, barring a few changes, and even though I don't regret writing it-- because it helped me get into the headspace to pull this off, and because the changes made here have a ripple effect that change a lot, to such an extent that not having this fic to contextualize it would make later installments confusing-- I still feel like I was far too repetitive. All in all, I'm not pleased with large swaths of this fic, because I am very much just directly adapting entire scenes and episodes verbatim, but this last chapter, especially the ending, is the exception. It's kind of a big relief, to have it all done.
> 
> Altogether, I really do love season one, though I do have a lot of issues with it, hence the deviations in this fic. For all its flaws it's sincerely one of my favorite pieces of fiction, and you can pry it out of my cold stiff corpse hands. Take this fic as a love letter laced with salt, to season one.
> 
> (Aside from that, I suppose I may as well mention that I had this rule in place while I was outlining, where I'd take the names of all the fics and their individual chapters from lyrics of songs used in the television show. Additionally, I could only use each song once, and only use songs used in the show prior to season two [Because I'm petty.]. This detail adds basically nothing and is probably only cared about by me, but I've been sitting on it for a while, and I've been real pleased with the result, so I thought I'd share. So, there you go!)
> 
> I realize that this is an absolutely gargantuan monster of a fic, and so much of it is me quoting the source material directly, so to the people who got this far, thanks so much for reading!
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
> 
> Coming up next: that pause that comes after the end of the world, and before the new one begins.


End file.
